The rise and fall of Australia's own car

Back in the 1940s, General Motors-Holden’s managing director, Larry Hartnett, was keen to manufacture a car in Australia.

While he has generally been acknowledged as the father of the Holden, he needed the approval of the GM board under chairman and president Alfred P Sloan Jr, which was forthcoming in 1944. But a locally manufactured Australian car was already on GM’s agenda.

Although GM had written off its German company, Opel, as a one-off tax loss in 1942, great sales success had been achieved by Opel during the Third Reich.

Taking advantage of Chancellor Hitler’s first major decision six weeks after coming to power in January 1933, which was to remove all sales tax on new cars (1933), Opel availed itself of hitherto unavailable economies of scale to introduce a radical new method of mass-producing cars: monocoque construction.

Named for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games was the Olympia sedan. Others followed, including the luxurious Kapitän. The engineering genius behind these cars which propelled Opel not only to dominance of the German market but also number one in Europe was an American who had been involved with all-steel bodies since early in his career.

Russell S Begg had worked at Budd, the pioneering company in this field and its German division Ambi-Budd designed the Olympia’s monocoque. Begg completed his assignment at Opel and sailed back to the US on September 24, 1939.

Begg was appointed chief engineer of the Australian Car Program (195Y25) in late 1944, by which time had worked in the automotive industry for 35 years; he understood the need for cars to handle rough roads, like the Model T Ford could.

Using all the knowledge he had gained in Germany (which included developing four- and six-cylinder versions of an Experimental Light Car, the four being 195-Y-13 and the six 195-Y-15), Begg set to work; 195-Y-15 was the starting point as the name 195Y25 (‘a modern concept of a motor car based on the 195-Y-15 and having a curb weight of 2100 pounds’) suggests.

Arguably, no other car in history has been so carefully conceived for a unique set of circumstances as the Holden was. First, it had to suit the very demanding conditions imposed by Australia. Second, it had to showcase GM’s international knowhow to the watching post-war world.

Meanwhile, Hartnett sent numerous scale models to Detroit where they were ignored. Begg politely ignored his offers of help – ‘chief engineers are not very good correspondents’.

Begg’s decision to give his car a superior power to weight ratio than expected at the time caused some conflict with his immediate boss, but in the end he got his way. Rather than 195-Y-15’s top speed of 74 miles per hour, 195Y25 got 80-plus.

Begg, described by one Australian engineer as ‘a fanatic for weight saving’, reasoned that a larger, torquier engine would impose less strain on the drivetrain and yield better economy.

And so the Holden got the same 60hp the Kapitän that Begg had on hand in Detroit, while undercutting its weight by more than 15 per cent. He added five per cent to the weight of 195-Y-15 for better durability.

All he needed then was input from Aussie engineers who insisted on nine inches of ground clearance – up from the proposed eight – to cope with Australia’s kangaroo tracks which passed as highways.

Birth of ‘the Holden’
The Holden was developed entirely in Detroit with final testing in Australia on a road loop from Melbourne to the Dandenong foothills.

In 1948 the Holden 48-215 was undoubtedly the best car in the world for Australia. But its wartime styling dated quickly and the longer, wider, lower FE of July 1956 was keenly welcomed. It was styled in Australia and was probably the best executed design in the GM world at the time, more modern than a contemporaneous Chevy.

In 1957 the FE Station Sedan – the precursor to SUVs – extended the Holden’s versatility at a time when new Australian suburbs were burgeoning.

So absolute was the Holden’s market dominance that management felt little need to make major changes. It was not until 1963 and the EH that a more modern six-cylinder engine replaced the old grey unit.

The EJ Premier of 1962 brought new luxury to the mainstream and in 1968 the HK Monaro GTS seemed like a sports car revolution.

But the competition was getting stiff, especially from Ford Australia under Bill Bourke, who masterminded the four-door Falcon GT and the long-wheelbase Fairlane, both arriving in 1967. Holden’s 1971 HQ could have been a world-beater had GM-H’s chief engineer not been Cadillac-trained George Roberts.

By 1975 the soggy, plough-understeer dynamics had come under the notice of the Americans, who brought Charles Chapman and Joe Whitesell, as well as demon driver, Peter Hanenberger (whom the Aussies soon nicknamed Handlingberger), to fix this problem with new suspension settings and a clever acronym straight from Pontiac – RTS for Radial Tuned Suspension.

Holden’s V-car is born
World cars beckoned and the decision was taken to replace the Kingswood/Premier with the V-car. Starting with the four-cylinder Opel Rekord, the Australian engineers developed the Commodore.

But bets were hedged: both the (slightly) smaller Torana and the bigger Kingswood/Premier selling alongside the new Euro-focused Commodore released in 1978.

Peter Brock’s HDT produced hero sports versions at a time when Ford Australia had dropped its V8 engine option.

Nevertheless, perceived – thanks to superior Ford marketing – as too small, the Commodore lost ground to the Falcon and by 1986 GM-H was doomed to closure unless it received a huge bailout from its parent.

American help meant the ‘big new V6’ VN Commodore of 1988 could be introduced.

Holden regained market leadership but the Americans absolutely ran the show.

The elegant 1997 VT Commodore constituted a brilliant Australian – read: Mike Simcoe, now boss of GM styling internationally – re-imagining of the Opel Vectra.

By this time Holden’s marketing smarts finally outclassed those at Ford Oz and the Commodore was never again outsold by the Falcon (except for maybe two months around the turn of the century).

In 2004 at the Sydney motor show, Holden presented a Vectra-sized project car called the Torana TT36. When the VE followed two years later, it was clear that here was a much bigger, more conservative sedan version of the brilliant four-door hatchback Torana.

Doubtless, memories of the first generation, supposedly too-narrow Commodore lingered and also the spectacular failure of the anaemic front-wheel drive Camira of 1982 to capture Australians’ interest drove the decision to stick with a big car.

Mostly, the press received the VE well but to some of us this ‘full-sized’ (to borrow an Americanism) car was obviously anachronistic: a 20th Century car for the 21st Century.

Perhaps a Torana-sized version might not have done very well either, but you didn’t need a crystal ball in the 2002-03 framework as the VE evolved to understand that the local love affair with big six-cylinder and V8 sedans could not last forever with fuel prices soaring and SUVs coming into fashion.

Interestingly, those who did choose a Commodore or Falcon in the last decade and a half often preferred the sports versions and the percentage of V8 engines in the Commodore mix rose. These cars had gone from being family sedans to performance cars.

It was too late for the Falcon as early as 2002 when the brilliant BA failed to reverse the sales slump and then the inspired four-cylinder FG EcoBoost sank without a trace.

While Commodore sales slumped, despite the billion-dollar 2006 VE, Holden Special Vehicles introduced its Mercedes-Benz AMG E 63-beating, 2013 VF-based GTS and then – in 2017, the final year of Commodore manufacture – the stunning VFII GTSR W1 limited-edition.

Sadly, too few buyers appreciated that Australia now produced probably the world’s finest mainstream four-door sports sedan, not to mention its only car-based sports ute.