It’s a big old country this one. And we all know its history when it comes to big things. The Big Pineapple, The Big Prawn, The Big Banana, The Big Koala, the list goes on.
Now, Victoria’s second-largest city, Geelong, might get in on the action with a proposed ‘Big Ford Ute’ being considered. And Prime Minister Scott Morrison is apparently into it.
Geelong’s vehicle manufacturing history is long and proud. The city was home to the Ford Motor Company from 1925, until the last car rolled off the line in 2016. Interestingly enough, the Ford Motor Company of Australia was actually an outpost for the Ford Motor Company of Canada, which was a separate company to Henry Ford’s Ford USA, and had the manufacturing rights to produce Ford motor cars in the British Empire.
Less than 10 years after Ford was established in Australia, the Geelong factory designed and built the first ute in 1934. An icon was born.
A Geelong council meeting in late November saw a motion moved “to investigate the potential and feasibility of a Geelong Museum of Motoring and Industry and The Big Ford Ute project, and to request chief executive officer Martin Cutter endorse funding of up to $75,000 in the 2020-21 financial year towards this with a report to come back to the council by July 2022.” according to the Geelong Times.
“We’ve all been on little trips across the country where ‘big things’ can become part of the journey–the Big Koala, the Big Banana, the Big Guitar, the Big Cat–so this is something that is not unique and won’t be unique, but it will be putting Geelong on the map,” Cr Grzybek told the Times.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has recently been in Victoria drumming up support for the coming election which saw a question posed from a journalist regarding the proposition of a Big Ute.
Will The Big Ute happen? We’ll have to wait and see.
Find out more about the Geelong Museum of Motoring and Industry on their website.