√How Holden very nearly wasn’t | Drive Flashback

Australia’s once-beloved Holden could have been known by a different name had GM’s Harold E Bettle had his way, as then Drive editor Phil Scott reported in 1998.

Story originally published in Drive on 22 November, 1998

It was very nearly the Canbra Car Corporation or, almost as bad, Melwood Motors. Holden, shorthand for Australian car, celebrates a half-century next Sunday, having narrowly averted an embarrassing baptism.

The details are in a new book to be published on Friday. Heart Of The Lion is a three-year labour of love by journalist and historian John Wright.

An objective look at Holden, it was sanctioned by the company, which opened its archives and gave unprecedented access. The result is more than a good read for devoted car buffs, it is a fascinating slice of Australian history.

Wright found this memo, dated April 1, 1947:

“The concensus (sic) of opinion is that the name should be ‘CANBRA’. This is the phonetic spelling of the word ‘Canberra’, the name of the Federal Capital of Australia. It qualifies … but it does not, of course, identify General Motors-Holden’s Limited with its manufacture.”

The author was Harold E. Bettle, the American managing director of the General Motors outpost in far-away Melbourne, a place where, since 1936, various Chevrolets, Vauxhalls and other GM cars had been assembled.

Bettle wasn’t playing an April Fool’s joke in his despatch to Detroit.

Canbra, Austral, Gem and Melwood were serious suggestions of proposed names for Australia’s first locally manufactured car.

Fortunately, Edward Riley, general manager of GM Overseas Corporation, had the good taste to recommend Holden. It was a tribute to Sir Edward Holden, part of the original family of coachbuilders and the first managing director of GM-H. He had died the previous year.

On November 29, 1948, Ben Chifley, prime minister of a vast country with a population of just seven million, launched the first Holden (pictured below).

“Australia’s Own” they called it, even though it had been designed and engineered almost entirely in Detroit.

It didn’t matter. Holden employed thousands of Aussies and put the nation on wheels after the hard times of World War II. The contribution it made to the economy and to industrial progress was colossal.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Holden is to Australia what Volkswagen is to Germany, what Chevrolet represents to the US: real heartbeat-of-the-nation stuff, heavily wrapped in the national flag.

This is curious, for unlike other Aussie icon brands, from Bushell’s to Arnott’s to Vegemite, Holden is unique in that it has always been a wholly-owned subsidiary of an American corporation. The only Aussies offered shares, the last of the Holden family’s small stake was sold in 1960. Yet Ford would give its eyeteeth and a big bundle of cash for the cachet of the Holden brand name.

“Football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars…” was an advertising anthem that said it all.

For General Motors the affection many Australians feel for Holden is the pay-off for the foresight it showed when the post-war government issued an invitation to manufacture an Australian car. Ford didn’t follow for another dozen years.

Job No 1 was the famous 48-215, the humpy Holden which the brochures claimed had “a modern, all-steel turret-top Aerobilt” design. Styling came out of the studio in Detroit run by Harley Earl, a larger than life figure later to invent the tail fin and chromed-everything.

Prototype No 1 was built at Fisher Body in Detroit in July, 1946.

On November 29, 1948, at Fishermens Bend in Melbourne, Ben Chifley presided over what the Melbourne Herald described as a “Hollywood-like Premiere for New Car … complete with distinguished guests and newsreel cameras whirring beneath the canvas-awninged entrance to a flower bedecked hall. There was a string orchestra, attractive hostesses and refreshments to provide the right atmosphere for the presentation of the new Australian car to 1000 guests”.

Next Sunday on the same site, Holden will re-enact the scene, complete with a Chifley body double.

As Wright says: “Much of the romance that attaches to the name Holden grew from the car’s unique position throughout the 1950s. Only the Holden was homegrown. It was tough, economical and, by 1950s standards, fast for a sedan. The engine happily ran past 80,000 miles without needing a de-coke while the Pommy four-cylinder models of the day rarely reached 30,000 without giving trouble.”

Holden’s dominance of Australian car culture spanned three decades. It still markets the top-selling single model in the country but these days only dreams of the glory times when waiting lists extended to years, when every car it built was snapped up, when bumper profits rolled in, year after year.

The cars it manufactured were simple, over-engineered, under-stressed and durable. Nearly all of them were designed and engineered here, with the exception of the (pictured above) 1965 HD (known internally as the Hastily Designed), which came out of Detroit.

Every dinky-di Anglo Aussie has a story to tell about his or her Holden.

The cars have featured in films, none richer in imagery than the opening scenes of Sunday Too Far Away, where Jack Thompson, as a shearer, rolls his humpy on a dusty outback road.

In a pub you’ll get an argument every time, but expert opinion suggests the FJ was the best of the 1950s Holdens, the EH a masterwork of the ’60s and the curvy HQ the highpoint of the ’70s.

But the 1980s nearly killed Holden. It was merged with Toyota in 1985 and began selling Japanese clones in its showrooms. Disgusted, few Australians bought these rebadged Toyotas. Detroit thought we would. Detroit was wrong.

The arrival of the bigger, gutsier (but bug riddled) VN model of 1988 turned the corner. By the mid-’90s, Holden had earned its way back to independence with the gradually improving Commodore. But the world has changed.

No longer does one car maker command a majority share of our market. While Holden has a stranglehold on the lucrative business and fleet market with the Commodore, in recent years it has struggled to sell cars to private buyers, particularly the under-30s, who don’t identify with nation-building feats that pre-date their birthdays.

Many don’t share the passion; they don’t understand, as Wright says, that “Holden is a metaphor for Australia”.

“Look at the cars,” he says. “In the 1950s they were Chips Rafferty; tough, uncomplicated and honest. Every model reflected the changes we went through as a nation. The current Commodore is an international car, designed for a more sophisticated and international country.”

At Fishermens Bend, they no longer make cars. That work is done at Elizabeth in South Australia. The once sprawling site has been gradually carved up and sold off. What remains is the administration and technical buildings and the original “social centre” where Chifley did the honours.

On the same spot, 50 years to the minute, history repeats itself.