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.
So did they directly hire
FrankensteinFrank Stephenson or did they contract out to him as a design studio/contractor? Is that like “body by Pininfarina” or contracting out to Lotus to make a sports car?The F430 is my peak unattainable dream car so I’m on board if they can figure out some way to bring that energy to this project. Not sure how to do that with a cheap truck but I’m not a designer nor did I stay in in a Holiday Inn Express.
It’s Frank En Steen, Igor!
It’s not Igor, it’s Eye-Gor.
Where wolves?
Wrong it is stine or stein. It is eye gore or ee orr
The F430 is objectively the most beautiful car ever to exist.
That’s the only nice thing I have to say about what was in this article, so I’ll do what my mama told me and stop there.
I just can’t get past that terrible REO logo
It feels like they started with the O and got the right half of the E done and then realized there was no way that R was going to look right.
Yes, I mean.. if you want the O to look like a nut at least stay true to the shape and not like you accidentally pinched the logo.
It’s because it looks like they had an engineer design it and not a graphic designer. The sides of the logo are geometrically symmetrical, but to look visually symmetrical there need to be a few tricks involved. Like how a car needs a subtle ward arch on its beltline or it looks like it sags.
It might be a bit better if that top of the R that tails away from the shapes was just slightly longer. It might give it the appearance that the logo is moving.
Tried to resist, but…
These lights would be a huge style differentiator, for sure.
But I don’t know of a US truck manufacturer, outside of the luxury ones, that has a pair taillights sitting side-by-side like REO shows. Why the extra width and extra lights? Hard to believe they’ll have lights embedded in a tailgate for that truck’s price.
So, why have a pricier pair of lights in a unit like that? Or, are these super cheap off-the-shelf units that bolt on top of a bumper?
Torch is happier. I think they look cool, and fun to try to get people to think “Ferrari” with the design’s name. And, I look forward to what the actual design looks like.
The fact that Torch didn’t opine on the Opel GT Taillights means he is making a business decision or I know more about tailights than he does.
“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.”
My italic bold for emphasis. I think you’re right, as that was something that crossed my mind when reading Torch’s article…
I see them and I instantly saw a pickup, specifically the REPU. 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
That’s a great image for how to have quad tail lights! And, all lights seem exactly the same which reduces unit pricing.
I think the US now had requirements on brake light visibility with the tailgate down. So, lights in a bumper are likely no longer kosher. Here’s a ‘lights within bumper’ example; you’ll have to select rear image to see the lights better.
https://carsandbids.com/auctions/36VVQEpz/1986-chevrolet-el-camino
Going off of current SUVs I believe you are correct that if a moveable panel contains lights there has to be the legal minimum lighting still visible if that panel is not closed.
I don’t remember which vehicle but I have seen pictures of a SUV that has some lights in the jamb that are only visible with the hatch open.
For a pickup I would guess that if the outer most ones are visible with the tailgate down, and they are full function they might be OK, but I’m certainly not a lighting expert.
My old Q3 had additional lights in the bumper that only illuminated if I had the back hatch open (or if I had the rear fogs on) since the regular lights were fully on the hatch
Did a quick search, but didn’t find a pic of an SUV with (otherwise hidden) rear lighting illuminated with hatch door open and up. I have a memory of seeing such a setup on a higher end SUV. Maybe it was an Audi, as Nick Fortes indicates.
I did find a Lincoln with lights and reflectors at bumper-ish level.
Not sure if only a styling choice, or required?
https://www.reddit.com/r/lincolnmotorco/comments/1hqk0h5/21_lincoln_corsair_tail_light_issue/
Interesting about the Lincoln and Nick’s vehicle that has bumper lights that are only on when the hatch is open.
As far as the one with the hidden lights I do think it might have been an Audi but I am not certain about that.
I predict the Aptera is more likely to go into production and become widely available than the REO truck.
Where is that falling on the elio vs tesla roadster spectrum? Do we have charts?
Most likely to least likely:
-Tesla Roadster
-Aptera
-REO Truck
-Elio (doesn’t even have an active website… which is something REO at least has).
Man I hadn’t looked at elio in a while. Sounds like their domain registration expired in 2024. Bummer. I guess I can throw out that reservation email. And retire the jokes.
Atleast apteras still going to produce consumer production intent class a reservation vehicles for sell delivery or validation by q4.
The jokes remain valid, you just have to change the names.
Good idea but what rhymes with Anoos?
Depends on how you pronounce it.
Aptera has been saying that about every year for the last . . IDK, maybe 7 years.
Actually a nice simple cheap ICE truck is what many people want. Another fact? You don’t ask a Liberace designer to design a basic truck, or a car designer. Better just buying a design from another truck company who no longer builds trucks.
You know what they say? Opinions are like assholes everyone has one and they all stink
Good thing I was making a prediction and not giving an opinion!
More bullshit from another bullshit startup that won’t work.
Of all auto logos, I think REO has the best suited to a truck tire tread pattern.
Torch, are you sure those are quad taillights as opposed to single taillights on two separate, very small trucks in the distance?
To be known as the Tax, Tac, and Sac.
“Yo, check out Bob’s new Sac!”
I’m not getting in the Sac with Bob. I like the guy and all…but he makes these weird noises.
Frank and co must have been low bidder. He does seem to be doing more pro bono work. Like the designs with the tarvish. This thing is starting to sound like “new homes starting at $199k spring 2028”.
Where are those homes (or claims)? I’ve never even seen a marketing claim like that for ‘affordable’ housing in over two decades.
You can still find some in the south the mid west. I still can’t believe they were selling new houses for $60k 7 years ago in Arkansas.
all i know is truck or not, we can all use some cars that are cheaper to buy these days.
Everyone agrees on that, which is why this grifter can get press coverage.
Also, he answers the phone when a journalist calls. On one hand, it’s cool. Christian Koenigsegg speaks directly to journalists without running it through his PR / legal people. But he doesn’t have unlimited time for those conversations.
The fact that the founder of a startup in the middle of designing a whole-ass vehicle and figuring out how to produce it has nothing better to do in the middle of his workday tells you how much real work he is doing.
Translation: We assigned a couple of interns to sketch up some boxes on wheels, an investment befitting the prestige of REO.
Dictated and sent in my absence
I know it’s not quite the same, but I’ve seen Slate trucks are on the road doing demos. Come on Slate, don’t fail me now.
You’ve seen them on the road? TK-421, why aren’t you at your post?!
Damn communicators from Temu.
Boring conversation anyway.
I think Slate is far a long and has the money backing them they will make deliveries at the end of this year/early next year. But will they last? Hard to say unless they get some huge fleet volumes.
Fleet buys will allow them to survive a relatively low consumer percentage of buys, IMHO.
Yeah which I don’t see them meeting their consumer numbers needed. Thought I saw somewhere they need a sale of like 80k per year to brake even which I just don’t see happening with a niche product. I would be in line for one if they had 4×4 but just cannot justify getting one for their current price with no 4×4. I commute to South Bend IN and it gets around ~70inches of snow every winter so yeah would much prefer having the 4×4 hah.
Some FWD cars are fairly decent with true winter/snow tires, though a RWD truck would be fairly useless or unsafe even with snow tires in the winter. But, I agree with you – four wheel drive for snowy places. Without a need for a truck, my Subaru does well with the right tires in winter.
Yup I got screwed in my RWD truck (92 Cummins 5spd so no ABS/TCS or anything) coming home a few years back people kept stealing the diesel pump when I was trying to pull up to it. It wasn’t supposed to snow for 30min or so well since I got stuck waiting for said pump by the time I hit the Illinois/Indiana border it was a blizzard and the back end kicked out on me. Still ticked from that we never wanted to drive the truck is snow and it was in great shape for what it was luckily I was unharmed and the truck wasn’t totaled or anything but at this point not really worth it to get the body fixed.
So long story short yeah I am not driving a RWD vehicle on these crappy Indiana roads anymore haha.
Glad you were safe with that adventure, even if you had to change your pants afterward. Bags of sand help, but not enough for a RWD truck. Being able to walk and talk after a winter drive is pretty important.
Hah yup did a complete 180 on 80/94 twas fun. I wound up getting new tires after that though just made sure to drive my FJ only from December until spring (have the Polestar 2 so it is that or the FJ now in winter).
There’s your problem right there. You should have been towing a 10,000lb horse trailer. You know, for safety.
As someone who lives in ‘horse country’ or the closest we have to that in this area, I do not love horse trailers, the vehicles that tow them or the humans who own either.
A RWD truck is exactly what the vast majority of truck buyers drove in the winter for decades and decades, the belief that anything without 4WD or AWD is a recent phenomenon that began around the time winters started becoming noticeably milder
Plus it is all about the tires regardless of where the power goes
I do get your point.
And, I think that for most of those decades of RWD truck driving, they were -work- trucks, not the ‘passenger’ beasts roaming the highways and streets today.
Also, folks in the south lived decades and decades without air conditioning. Seems essential now, and unlikely people would give it up today.
I will say that I grew up with only RWD trucks in the South and didn’t always have AC in the house, or truck.
Other than one Hyundai I bought to meet corporate car allowance requirements, I’ve never owned anything other than RWD vehicles, and have had no trouble living in the northeast my entire life. Well, I say no trouble, but there have been a couple winters where either the first snowfall came earlier than I expected or I was just lazy and procrastinated, and was caught without putting the snow tires on in time, but that only messes up one commute and then you quickly fix it
Well, power to you! Maybe buy a lotto ticket!?
Is your truck’s bed empty? Or you travel on well-plowed roads!
I’ve never owned a truck, I have one in the driveway as a company vehicle right now, but my primary personal vehicles have been a couple of Challengers, Mustang, Camaro, 4 different Ford/L-M Panther cars, a Volvo 940, a Fleetwood, a Beetle, etc. I haven’t always had company vehicles, for many years it was just mileage reimbursement on personal cars, until that one company 5 years ago decided they wanted to have more say in my choice of personal vehicle
Got it. A RWD auto with better weight distribution than a truck.
Cheers
You put weight in the bed, most work trucks ride like shit with empty beds anyway
I was delivering pizza in a 3rd gen f-body with two donut spares through one of the snowiest winters on record on the Boston area (1994-1995, 107″).
It was not on 2 donuts for the entire winter, but it was for a few good storms.
I discovered a Mustang with 4 Blizzaks is vastly better than a Caravan on summer tires, the only issue is having to stop once in awhile to shovel away the snow that builds up against the front air dam
Most FWD cars are fine with show tires. My 1998 Civic was TERRIBLE even with snow tires. I would drive my wife to work in my S13 with snow tires because she was (justifiably) terrified to take the Civic.
I just don’t see fleets buying many of these, even if they would fit the application perfectly, at least initially, just too much risk in a start up that doesn’t have a proper service network.
True about risk of Slate going bankrupt would keep some businesses away. Maybe a national chain would get a sweetheart deal for an initial purchase of a dozen, for use in a couple of cities in California. BEV charging infrastructure largely in place and maybe city incentives to ease initial cash outlay.
I agree fleet is the only hope for Slate, and I think it would be a really good fit for a lot of applications.
But fleet managers are deeply conservative, as they should be. They want something tried and true. Nobody is getting fired for buying Fords.
Taking a chance on Slate as a fleet manager is a huge gamble, and your job might be on the line for it.
Only way I can see them taking the risk if gas prices keep climbing and stay high. But if the Fjord Fantom actually stays at that 30k price(but we heard oh this will be x price their first go around with the lightning) then I cannot really see Slate getting the sales they need which is a shame because it seems like a really cool little truck.
failed startups I’ve seen not happen
umm… gotta pick one or the other, Mister Torch.
Failed startups create no happening.
That’s right.
Okay isn’t it more like 30 years that they actually made anything? Bit of a stretch to say over a century there guys…
I believe the Diamond REO brand was used more recently in Australia for rebadged Chinese trucks, but that only lasted a few years
Things got messy towards the end with bankruptcies, buyouts, and reorganizations but US production was from 1905 to 1975, which is still short of a century but significantly more than thirty years. As Ranwhenparked noted, the use of the name in Australia persisted more recently than that.
Didn’t the trucks built in Pennsylvania keep the Diamond REO badge into the mid ’90s, or were they just Diamonds?
I thought they were badged as Diamonds but I’m not sure.
I’ve seen some advertising and service manuals that used the Diamond REO emblem, but the newest ones I’ve come across were dated 1990 or 1991
Just to be clear, they announced a starting price before finalizing the design of the car? Design contributes MASSIVELY to price. I get the hope behind the company, but this is such utter Vaporware it makes the Gen 2 Tesla Roadster look successful.
I’m amazed how much press this brand is getting. Its the new Canoo
Canoo at least had some prototypes this place has had nothing so far. My dumb ass threw a couple hundred bucks at them for shits and giggles on my webull account yeah that didn’t pan out. You live and learn haha.
Wait. They’ve announced price and are planning production, but they’re JUST NOW getting a designer?
If they haven’t frozen the design, how do they know how much it’s going to cost?!?
It’s what happens when a property developer gets into another market. Announce price and timeline with some very rough ideas. Then try to get the bids to make it work. Where he thinks he will find suppliers like that in the US is beyond me.
Wasn’t REO originally to show their design next month (October 2026)? Now its 2027? Does this mean they weren’t actually working on it all along because they’ve only hired a designer just now?
Vaporware until proven otherwise.
Is it designed by Frank or just his company? I assume it will be handed off to an intern to knock out quickly.
So it’ll be a truck that has F430 tail lights and what, a MINI front end? Greaaaaat. I have about as much faith in this working as I do that Elio is still going to turn things around any moment now.
Loosely related… you can still put a deposit down on an Aptera…
https://aptera.us/reserve/
Yeah, they’re still doing their every several month begging for more money while they waste years on dumb shit like getting meaningless and ugly solar panels installed before getting a real car into customer hands, but this is a totally serious endeavor, we swear! The solar panels are great! In perfect conditions, you just have to move your car all around an outdoor parking lot to best follow the path of the sun throughout the day and you might be able to get a whole 40 miles extra! (On something that’s already supposed to be incredibly efficient, who cares?)
As a concept, I really like the solar-electric idea. And I think it can be useful. But maaaaan… the current incarnation of the company has been at this since 2019… 7 years. They shoud have had SOMETHING on sale at least a year or two ago.
Yeah, they need to get a car on the road and in customer hands and worry about nice-to-have features like the solar panels later. They’re not a necessity with the efficiency it has and not even useful to a lot of people (like many people, I garage my car and don’t live in a sunny climate, so they’re of minimal practical value and I think they’re ugly).
I’m OK with that…
https://95octane.com/2014/04/26/mini-paceman-adventure-pickup-truck/
A start up whose address was some random small storefront magically hires a renowned car designer to design their $21,000 pick up?
Yeah, ok. That’s totally believable.
I love the idea as much as the next guy, but this isn’t much different than a drawing of a truck by my kid at this point.
And Alpha Motor Corp has already been doing that for years now
They have ” arrived ” via matchbox…
If they can actually pull this off they will sell approximately a quintupletrillion of them
What am I missing here? Is getting a designer this late in the process normal or a red flag or something?
That logo looks too much like “Dr. Frank-N-Furter”
I’d say it’s a red flag, because it indicates they have a lot of other work to do, whether they’ll admit it or not. It’s hard to believe their target price when they don’t even know how much the raw materials for the body will cost.
They could use the Frank-N-Furter logo to their advantage. Market the full size spare with a clip of “you got caught with a flat well, how ’bout that?”
Hah! I wrote my (other) logo comment here before I read your logo comment…
I thought they already claimed to have had him working for them, though I don’t think they named him out right (just the same, I assumed that’s who they were referring to).