We’ve talked a good bit here about REO, the company that wants to build a combustion-engine’d pickup truck that will sell for an excitingly cheap $21,500. It’s a bold plan, trying to start an all-new car company in, you know, this economy, and while there are zero guarantees of success, I’ve found my conversations with REO’s CEO, Zach Di Bernardi to be refreshing and full of candor, and despite all the failed startups I’ve seen not happen, I find myself being hopeful.
Hope doesn’t get car companies started, of course, but there are some things that can help, one of which is good design. It appears that REO understands this, because the company just announced the designer they’ve secured to design their planned lineup of Runabout trucks, the T4X, T4C, and S4C.
The designer chosen for this is one you’ve heard of before: Frank Stephenson.
Here’s what REO’s press release has to say:
Over four decades, working for some of the biggest names in the business, Stephenson has designed or led the design of the modern MINI, the first BMW X5, the Fiat 500, the Ferrari F430, the Maserati MC12 and the McLaren P1. His work runs from supercars to small cars that became icons, and much of it has sold in huge numbers.
Now, Mr.Stephenson and I have had our differences in the past, but there’s no question he’s one of the most important automobile designers of our era and I’m eager to see what he’s come up with for REO. So far, all we have to go on is this teaser shot:
It’s taillight-focused, which I approve of. They’re nice round quad halo lights, which in itself aren’t exactly revolutionary, but I suspect there’s more to what we’re seeing than meets the eye. I don’t think I can go into this more just yet, but I think we’ll hear more soon, and perhaps more interesting thing about lighting in general.
Frank Stephenson had this to say about his work with REO:
“We’re proud to be working with REO, a brand with more than a century of American history behind it. It isn’t often you get the chance to help bring a name like this back, and the team of visionaries behind REO has a very clear idea of what these trucks need to be: simple, honest and built to last. That’s a brilliant brief for any designer. Our team is really enjoying shaping all three Runabout models, and we can’t wait to start showing people the work.”
Simple and honest and built to last are all good traits to have in a truck, and “reliability and right to repair” were noted in REO’s press release as crucial criteria as well.
I wish we had some more and better images, but we will be getting more images later , and a physical vehicle will be revealed in 2027. Or at least that’s the plan.
Will this all happen? At this point, I really can’t say. But at least there’s a real design team on board, and that never hurts.
I drove rear wheel drive pickups in Michigan for more than 25 years without a problem. Just had good all-season tires, and 100 lbs of sand bags over the rear axle and I never got stuck.
Gonna be a wet blanket today…
I do not understand the worship of car designers.. these are just people, and can be replaced immediately by any number of other designers chomping at the bit to take their place, and do just as good a job. They’re no more important than the guy installing the seats on the assembly line.
Also, this REO is pure vapor – it’ll never see the light of day.
“Cause I can’t fight this feeling anymore…”
What is it with designers that makes them such self-important primadonnas? (Autopian designers excluded)
Gotta give some credit to new Marie Kondo of car design, Frank Stephenson. Like Kondo built a business around tidying up other people’s mess, Stephenson seems to be doing the automotive equivalent. After critiquing car designs on his YT channel for a while, he’s taken on BMW’s directionless styling with the Bovensiepen 05 GT and Spider. If the round taillights reference the F430 what might the front look like? Mini-like headlights??
If they last long enough to make an estate car it better be called the Speedwagon
Recently I learned about the history of REO (Ransom Eli Olds of Oldsmobile fame) and their Speedwagon and that the band was named after it…
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fi-never-realized-that-reo-speedwagon-was-a-real-automobile-v0-fv7oi1gdr78b1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D67521f2b133b13ab8d787bd8363a7b3fcece9d58
Came to the comments for this. Leaving satisfied.
First model gonna be the FVW1000?
replied to wrong comment.. d’oh
It’ll be the TWO.
By the CEO’s own admission, the viability of his idea/company is entirely dependent on CAFE penalties no longer being collected by the government.
That is incredibly shaky ground. It doesn’t even require legislation to reverse. At this point, I don’t think a celebrity designer is what they need most…
Taillights look cool, especially for a pickup. Interesting they’re horizontal and don’t seem to have a seam between them. Would make for a narrower tailgate. Probably reading too much into it given it’s just a render.
The location of the lights on the page seem to indicate a higher mounting location, but they immediately gave me REPU flashbacks, which were under the tailgate. https://static0.topspeedimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/resize_1977_mazda_rotary_pickup_15683036768495d565ef6img_6988-copyb_r-2.jpeg?w=1600&h=900&fit=crop
How egotistical to slap his name on a Corvette tailight scheme and just take out a tailight. Is this the originality we can expect? I’m guessing he’s going to steal David Tracy’s design in Australia
IMHO he is not the one to pull this off. Don’t get me wrong he is a great car designer. But cars ain’t trucks. Those tailights, are clearly car lights stuffed where the will be destroyed in an accident. Good cheap truck tailights should be vertical in the back of the sides free from rear end taps, not set up for expensive repairs
Well, at least the F430 was an improvement on the even uglier 360, but that was the beginning of the end for me of Ferrari making decent looking cars. I’m not sure how much design matters at the supposed price or how much room there is to really stand out on a utility vehicle, but Stephenson’s name being attached—one of the more well known of the active designers as he’s very good at self-promotion (the most important talent to have by far)—at least makes it seem more serious.
You’re the first person I’ve ever heard say that the F430 was an improvement on the 360.
Possibly, but I severely dislike the 360 (it’s really the front, but I dislike it so much that it ruins the whole thing), so seeing how many people actually like it, I guess it makes sense that I would be in opposition to the common opinion on the 430 (which is also ugly). It’s a similar situation with other cars or bands that I’m not a big fan of, I tend to most like the models or songs/albums that fans of them dislike the most.
The best designer willing to take worthless stock options, cocaine and escorts as payment.
I didn’t realize that was an option, is it too late? What ever happened to submit a design based on requirements the winner gets paid?
How much design ability does a designer need to design a…truck (and an inexpensive gas one at that)? It’ll have an engine compartment, a cab, and a bed.
Dig the taillights, though.
but we all know some trucks are way more ugly than others. possible to screw up even a basic design.
Will it be able to offroad? Yes, it will dance across the sand, just like that river twisting through a dusty land.
And when you start the truck, it goes ‘do do do do de dooooo.”
Only if you put exlax in the gas tank
Hey my Isuzu Amigo couldn’t get out of the way of semis going uphill but it floated over puddles and snow better than anything. Plus fancy stickers and weird seat covers
Source? Heard it from a friend who, heard it from a friend who, heard it from another.
You been messing around
I couldn’t help myself
She goes to another school, you wouldn’t know her.
‘And the story gets better on down the line’.
This is about the dumbest thing ever. Some dude just blurts out they’re gonna’ make a truck. And people threw money at it. Maybe I need to do that too. I’m going to design a new jet plane. And it’ll have a clear roof so you can see the sky. And its going to cost $100,000. And I just got a former designer at Airbus to design something…..
I take only cash. So you can buy in. So give me a lot of cash and I swear I’ll have it ready in 6 months,
PS: I have no actual experience designing airplanes.
What about a self-cleaning/self-sterlizing WiFi connected bidet toilet that also sprays scents and automatically reorders its own refills on supplies and allows you to flush it or initiate cleaning functions via an app? I mean, if the Juicero people raised $120 million, that should be worth at least $300 mil, right?
Introducing the Singularity-1 brought to you by BlackWater Tech…This revolutionary toilet that uses AI stabilized quantum technology to eliminate waste and is guaranteed clog-proof. The toilet leverages BlackWater’s proprietary, patented quantum singularity technology to instantly compresses waste into non-existence.
Follow the AI model:
This reads way too accurate.
I used grok to write it for me.
(I edited out the slurs before posting)
Experience and education are just detriments to results. You can’t change the paradigm from inside the box the educational institutions taught you to be in! This is how you become a disruptor!
How much cash?
I don’t know anything about you, I don’t trust you in the parts where you’re not lying and I believe the parts where you’re not. I don’t have any money, but if I can circuitously invest in steel, glass, and electronics suppliers, and you agree to have your company buy those commodities, then we can both come away with lots of dollars that are essentially stolen, but not from a cash register like gets you 10-15 years behind bars, but from lots of other people that we’ve never met, the kind that gets you a 10-15 years between yachts.
The vibes are impeccable. The mission is go. Let’s Get Defrauding!!
P.S. Your username resonates with the core demographic (me). That’s gotta be worth a couple billion.
If they’re going to use REO, they’re going to have to put the wings on the logo. I don’t make the rules…
No you don’t, remember that
Oooh – Round taillamps.
Did he design those himself?
“REO, a brand with more than a century of American history behind it”
Are we counting the Oldsmobile and Speedwagon years?
BTW – How did these guys get the rights to the REO name, which Volvo owns after taking over White, via a series of mergers since 1967?
I don’t think the clock gets to keep ticking when they’re out of business. How about “REO, a brand with 38 years of history behind it 73 years ago”
You obviously don’t have a marketing degree. There are no rules man. Ever since the 4 door coupe it’s been Armageddon
White sold off Diamond REO in the early 1970s, about a decade before Volvo bought the company, so the trademark was never under Volvo ownership. Diamond REO hung on independently under changing owners until collapsing in bankruptcy in the mid 1990s, toward the end the corporate name was “Diamond Vehicle Solutions”, but they continued to use the Diamond REO nameplate on their trucks. Since Diamond Vehicle shut down in 1995, I’d assume the trademark lapsed at some point, or would up in the hands of a firm that deals with dormant intellectual property, who then did a deal with the current company.
EDIT: Checking with USPTO, it appears the original REO trademark, for “automotive vehicles”, filed by REO Car Company in January, 1906 (and claiming a first use in commerce in August, 1904), expired in December, 1988, when its final owner, Diamond REO Trucks Inc (as the truck manufacturer was called at the time), did not renew it
Diamond REO Trucks had another very general “goods and services” registration for REO that they allowed to lapse in February, 1987.
General Motors Corp also held a trademark on REO for “motor vehicles, namely, automobiles, engines therefor, and structural parts thereof” between February 1989 and August 1993, when they cancelled it, presumably they stepped in when they realized Diamond REO let it lapse and picked it up maybe for some Oldsmobile-related heritage advertising or merchandising, but then gave it up after either not using it, or realizing it could create trouble with the truck business that was still using the combined Diamond REO name.
As for Diamond REO, a company called Diamond REO Truck Company Acquisition held it for “heavy-duty trucks and structural parts thereof for use in construction industry” until October 2004, when it lapsed, that one had originally been filed by White in 1967.
The only related trademarks still registered are the ones this new REO Industries has filed, and a couple for vintage REO owners’ clubs, so it probably was dormant and available from 1993 onward, or, at least, 2004 onward.
Who says they do?
This CEO just may be a crackhead squatting on a name like lesser crackheads squat in abandoned office buildings.
Like others, I read this as Frakenstein,
So, I have an image of a patchwork design with styling choices stolen from a dozen other trucks, all slapped together with poor alignment and fit up.
Still looks better than a Cybertruck in my mind’s eye.
That’s a really low bar.