General Motors has applied for trademarks on the names of its offbeat 1950s Chevrolet El Camino and Nomad with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office.
The automaker filed the El Camino application Aug. 9 and the Nomad application May 22, the blog GM Authority reported last week.
But the automaker said it has no plans at this point to use the names on future models.
"Chevrolet benefits from a rich history of iconic names and monikers," a GM spokesman wrote in an e-mail. "We trademark these names as needed to protect them as a matter of practice."
Nonetheless, some enthusiasts hope the trademarks could mean GM is planning new models of the classic cars decades later and after several teases.
The El Camino debuted in 1959 as a collectible sedan pickup -- a body style that is still alive under GM's Holden unit in Australia and called a coupe ute. The carmaker showed a coupe pickup concept based on the Holden Ute at the 2008 New York auto show branded the Pontiac G8 ST; but after Pontiac's demise, it was never built.
The Nomad sporty wagon debuted in 1955; GM resurrected the name several times, but never with the flair of the original. Nomad enthusiasts hoped for a 2004 concept based on GM's Kappa platform that was the base for the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky convertibles, but the Nomad version was never built.
