Melbourne's other motoring event this weekend

This weekend will see the Australian Grand Prix run around Melbourne's Albert Park Lake, but motor enthusiasts will also be drawn to another event during the wait for the motor sport party to begin.

The Ian Potter Centre, an annex of the National Gallery of Victoria, is the venue for 'Shifting Gear: Design, Innovation and the Australian Car', which recounts the 110-year history of the car in Australia through a montage comprising 23 cars from the late 19th Century to the Buick Avenir clay buck developed by Holden's design team for the 2015 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

If the Holden-designed Avenir (pictured), which won the concept car of the year award in Detroit back in January, is the latest example of design on display at the exhibition, easily the oldest is a steam-driven car from 1896, which was actually built in the Melbourne suburb of Armadale.

Yesterday, self-professed Citroen enthusiast and presenter of 774 ABC Melbourne's 'The Conversation Hour', Jon Faine, visited the exhibition to talk with Professor Harriet Edquist, curator for RMIT's design archives and David Hurlston, Senior Curator at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Faine also spoke with Auto Horizon Foundation's Brian Tanti, Holden's Richard Ferlazzo and Ford XA Falcon GT owner, Les Dole during his interview. But first, he heard from David Hurlston concerning the design theme – one of five themes at the exhibit.

"It's really a celebration of design, and it's part of the NGV's expanded idea of what is creative cultures. What better way to do it than put cars up as objects of art?" Hurlston explained, when Faine put to him that art lovers might be unmoved by the concept of cars-as-art.

Professor Edquist – by her own admission neither a driver nor an enthusiast – does recognise the place in society for automotive design, and particularly here in Australia.

"It covers 110 years of car design, so it's really a celebration of what we've been doing for a long time – and doing well," she observed of the exhibit. "I think people often think that we don't design cars in Australia, they're designed elsewhere, but in fact we've been doing it for ages."

The professor continued by explaining how vehicle design in this country – as was the case in many other countries around the world – grew out of coachbuilding for the formative automotive industry.

"We have a reproduction of a journal, called The Australasian coachbuilder and wheelwright, and that shows six Australian body designs," she said. "And at this point... this was the early 20th Century... Australian coachbuilders were building bodies for imported chassis. That's how we started design, and right through this exhibition there is a theme of coachbuilding, which is really important. We had dozens of coachbuilding firms in Melbourne and Sydney.

"[Holden] built the bodies for Ford as well as General Motors..."

You can listen to the full, hour-long podcast and then visit the exhibition in person to take it all in.