√Drive Flashback: In 1960, one in every two new cars sold was a Holden

The FB Holden was out-of-fashion the moment it was launched but that didn’t stop buyers flocking to Holden showrooms and laying down their hard-earned cash.

Story by Tony Davis originally appeared in Drive on 16 August, 1996.

In 1960, Holden combined virtually all the ugly, stupid and out-of-fashion features, still held half the market – and made a ’90s cult car.

Every decade or so, automotive design trends reach their logical conclusion and cars suddenly stop getting squarer and squarer, or lower and lower, or curvier and curvier. Everyone catches a different wave, and last month’s must-have styling gimmick becomes this month’s cringing embarrassment.

Which brings us to the 1960 FB Holden, a car which adroitly brought together almost every single receding U.S. design trend in one hit.

It featured a dome roof, a dogleg windscreen, sharp brutal fins at the rear, headlight ‘eyebrows’, chrome strips running in every direction along the sides and that wonderfully stupid mid-1950s innovation: silver thread trim.

The dogleg windscreen gave the Holden additional wind noise, distorted vision and inhibited door openings, and most of the other new ‘features’ were equally hard to justify.

Naturally people laughed at the FB and sales were dismal. Actually, come to think of it, they praised it and bought it unremittingly. Indeed GM-H officials could argue that, if the FB was a mistake, it was a fortuitous one. It enabled GM-H to maintain its extraordinary 50 per cent-plus share of the market.

This, however, says more about GM-H’s unassailable position than anything else. Holden was so strong in Australia in the late 1950s and early ’60s that it alone could get away with the styling equivalent of buying up big the day before Black Friday.

The FB – which along with its facelifted descendant, the 1961 EK, is now becoming something of an eccentric collectable – at least proved that style isn’t everything.

When the Falcon XK was launched the next year it showed just how far off the pace Holden was in almost every department. Yet for all its sleekish sophistication, the first Falcon had no match for the Holden’s ruggedness, serviceability and golden reputation for reliability.

Pudgy and not overly powerful (56kW from a dated 2.3-litre six), the FB was a surprisingly agile performer and did its stated job – carrying the family from A to B in comfort – at least as well as anything even vaguely in the same price field.

Nearly 175,000 FBs were sold in about 16 months. GM-H probably would have sold more if it could have built more.

Prettier Holdens would follow (the EH and HR being notable examples) and such features as an automatic gearbox and an all-new engine were on the way.

The company’s main failing in the 1950s and early 1960s was that it was too successful. It dragged in many new local manufacturers, all hell-bent on duplicating its success story.

What had been a decent size pond for one fish suddenly became far too crowded.