Did you know they made a ute version of the Toyota Crown? We wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t, as they’re super-rare, and this 1967 example – currently in the build at Kustom Bitz in Croydon, Victoria – is one of few still kicking around.

Ron Smith of Kustom Bitz is building the ute for his customer Lou Papa, who sent it down from Sydney for Ron to work his magic. “Apparently, nobody else would touch the car; they reckoned it was too far gone,” says Ron. “I spoke to Lou and told him if the floors were no good to cut them out, so he did that and had it acid-dipped before it came down to me.”

Over the past eight or so years, Ron has worked on the car on and off to get it where it is today. “Obviously, there are no replacement patches for this car, so I had to hand roll and make all the replacement sections for the rear quarters myself,” he says.

However, as you can tell from the pictures, there’s a lot more than just rust repair going on here. Lou’s goal is to have a cool cruiser he can dump on the ground when parked at shows, so Ron has added plenty of extra barwork on top of the original chassis so it can accommodate a full airbag system.

“The chassis is remarkably similar to old Chevy stuff, particularly with the X-style design,” says Ron. “But the body has bugger-all strength, which is why I’ve added the extra hoops under the trans tunnel and strength for the cab floor.”

The powerplant of choice is a low-kilometre LS, backed by a T56 manual and a nine-inch that Ron has adapted with a Watt’s link and three-link system. A generic independent front end conversion sorts the steering end. “We did that partly for ease of lowering, but also because Lou found he couldn’t buy any new spare parts for the original Crown suspension,” says Ron. “So, we changed it to something we can get serviceable parts for.”

Along with rebuilding the rear quarters, Ron has extended the sills by a whole inch and redesigned the tailgate so it’s now moulded into the body. “With the raised tub floor, there was no point having a working tailgate anyway, so I redid a few of the lines to still retain the original-style tail-lights,” says Ron. “We want it to still look like a Crown, just a bit nicer.”

The major fab work on the ute is nearing completion, and Ron isn’t quite sure what Lou has planned from there. “He’s mentioned just painting it black and have it a bit ratty to show off the welds and lines,” he says. “He’s the customer, so I’ll leave it up to him.”