Overdrive

Some have romantic memories of old Holdens: Terry Thompson is ever the realist but loves them all the same.

Terry Thompson is a director of the ARDC, and has a long history in many things to do with cars and motoring, including the New South Wales Road Safety Advisory Council and a whole pile of motoring clubs, including the 48 and FJ. Holden Owners Club.

We chatted to him about the history. You can listen to the interview here

Terry has been the owner of a number of old Holdens including a couple of sedans and a panel van. When he used to take them down the street, he said a common response was "Hey mate I had one of these It was the best bloody car I've ever had" to which he would screw up my nose and think “Oh, my God. What have you been driving since you got there?”.

I asked him as delicately as possible what he use to use the panel van for, was it similar to the types of things we did in later, larger, versions of this sort of car. I was thinking of going camping or the like.

He noted that there use to be a sticker on the back of panel vans and utes that said “Yes. This is my ute and no, I'm not helping you move”.

While the first Holden came off the production line nearly seventy-two years ago there are still a considerable number of car clubs dedicated to the early models.

Terry noted that some are for the keeping the purity of the original cars including things like vacuum run windscreen wipers while others were not adverse to some modern electrics and other features on the old cars.

The encouraging point he made that these car clubs are not just a bunch of old men. He said: “A whole new tribe of younger people coming in to take over the cars and look after them”.

One of the great features of the early Holdens was “three on the tree”. These were the manual models with a column change and three forward gears.

Terry took one of his to the Bathurst races one year and let radio and television personality Clive Robinson drive it around the track. Actually Clive only drove it the very last section down Conrod Straight because he didn’t know how to drive a manual. Mike Raymond, the track commentator at the time said that he thought Terry was a very brave man.

Dean Oliver and he and his family’s early holdens

Overdrive's artist in residence, Dean Oliver also comes from a family that has had its passion for Holden cars. We chatted about those early years and Dean as a young man with a passion for cars but not the financial responsibility that some would have liked,

DB Dean, your family did have some Holden's how far back to the go.

DO Yeah. Thanks, David. Yes. Our family had a fairly small collection of Holden's, but nonetheless a good one. My parents originally came through from a 1950s Austin A40 tourer, but my father used to deliver newspapers in. And then the big move was a 1962 EK Holden's special. It was a station wagon and it had the two speed, hydromatic gearbox, which was brand new, and Dad used it to deliver newspapers around Shellharbour and that area of the south coast.

DB Now, that's the reflection of the times, because when the first Holden came in, the biggest selling car was the A40 Austin Devon.

DO Well, yes, he certainly fitted that theory really well. But the old English |Austin was just no match for the rough potholes of the roads of country, New South Wales.

DB How did your father feel with that change? Because it was going to a bigger car, a more powerful car, and a more rugged car. Was he proud of that?

DO It was the pride of the family, David. There were photographs of the family standing beside it, beaming, smiling, and it was a spectacular looking thing compared to the old Austin. The Holden was bright blue and a strip down the side and the EK had those wonderful tailfins on the taillights which looked very American.

DB It was that era of the excess of the Cadillac reflecting the space race, really, wasn't it? It was trying to look like it was a rocket.

DO Yes. But NASA rockets probably didn't overheat with quite the same problem as the Holden did, especially on our trips up to Sydney.

DO Mom always packed a thermos and some sandwiches because the Holden would get pretty warm going up Mount Ousley from Wollongong and dad always had a race with himself to see if he could get over in third gear with changing back down to second. About 50 percent of the time.

DB That's another whole story of the hills in every capital city under which people tested their car or even in your cases, you're saying some of the more rural roads, if you can get up the hill, then you know you're doing well. Did they continue with Holdens?

DO Yes. And after almost ten years, the old EK gave way to a 1972 HQ Kingswood and it was a 253 V8. And I think my poor old dad might have got done over by the salesman at the Holden dealership. It was pretty well out of character for him to go for a smooth V8, and especially the HQ was the clour was Chateau Mauve, which was a metallic purple colour.

It started rusting from the day we bought it.

DB You then continued your first car, I think was a Torana, but it came with an unsolicited recommendation for financial prudence.

DO Well, I've got my first job and I was pretty keen on Holdens and the Holden Dealer Team and the Bathurst race and all that sort of thing. I had a job. I was getting a regular income and so it had to be a Torana. There's no way I could have got an XU1 because insurance was just totally impossible for a young bloke in his early 20s. So my new car was a GTA Torana. A 1973 LJ model and it was wonderful and I bought it with a bank loan and I got a stern lecture from the bank manager about responsible financial management. And in hindsight, I think I borrowed about $2000. The car was about $3,400 new and I borrowed $2000 which dollars at the day was an enormous amount of money. So the bank manager was, I think, pretty horrified.

There is an old adage about motor racing. “Race on Sunday; Sell on Monday”.

This was one of those passionate mantras that seem to motivate Holden and Ford during the glory years of the long-distance production car racing at Bathurst in the late 60s and most of the 70s. Holden kept at it for years after that more than Ford.

Fred Brain is a classic example of someone who had a close association with Holden arising out of their racing at Bathurst.

Fred grew up on a farm near Wagga and they did not get a television till 1969. He watched his first Bathurst race that year, won by Colin Bond and Tony Roberts in a Holden Monaro GTS 350.

Subsequently he bought a genuine GTS 350 Monaro which he still has. He baught a second Monaro that he now races in the historic category.

You can hear Fred reminisce about the life and times of his cars at:

Some of the things Fred mentions are as follows:

He took his genuine GTS350 off the road and parked it in a shed at the farm in the late 80s to restore in the near future. The restoration is going strong (if very slowly!!).

He entered his racing Monaro In the East Coast classic (an attempt to get a Targa Tasmania going in NSW). I was his navigator. When we went through Oberon we were approach by a Catholic priest who was a Holden fan so he blessed the car. Lucky he wasn’t a Ford fan or he would have done an exorcism.

A young boy approaches the car at one stop and said how surprised he was to see the car as he ahad not seen one before. Fred noted that it was built before he was born. The young lad said “But I am 15 years old!”. The car at that stage was at least 30 years old.

We also approached by a lady who was well into her middle age years, who was wearing a Monaro T-Shirt that she had had since she was a young girl. To her credit it still fitted although it was being stretched a little. She had loved Monaros from the beginning and still did to this day.

A passion for the brand, especially when racing, does not however, guarantee continual sales. Fred’s first regular car was a Toyota Corona and then he rally and Raced a Datsun 1600. He has owned a series of cars including a Valiant Pacer and a Ford station wagon (used as a tow car).

His emotional attachment to Holden Monaros will help keep the history alive but he has little feeling for the American owned company that has decided to leave our market.

Hello and welcome to Overdrive a program that ponders the purpose of cars and transport

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2. Can the Haval H9 SUV make it here? (2:07)

3. The standout design feature in the Citroen C5 (3:08)

4. A hydrogen-electric ute (4:04)

5. A new meaning to “Heavy Metal Fan”: (5:00)

6. We put a call in to the UK to speak to their head of Future Mobility Dr Tim Leverton about where Jaguar is going in the future (6:04)

7. And Brian Smith has some quirky news

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You can find more information at Driven Media or previous programs are available as podcasts on iTunes or Spotify. OR our Facebook site OverdriveCity

So, let’s start with the news

Originally broadcast 29 February 2020

DB: Alan Finlay is a great friend of the program and is a respected traffic engineer and transport planner. His family has had twelve Holdens over the years with a predominance in the early part, I believe.

DB: Alan, I looked at your first six cars, the first five from an FJ to an EH were Specials and the next one at H.K. was a premier. Were you the rich family in the street we all envied?

AF: No, not at all, though. We were very much a middle-class family, but something I don't know what it was in 1969, probably with a bit of goading from me, convinced my father that he should go up a level and get the premier for his next car. The other thing I remember about that car is that I talked him into the more powerful 186S six-cylinder motor rather than just the one eight six.

DB: The S was it a performance car.

AF: Absolutely not. I mean, the FC Holden, I remember well, which was my mother's car, which was bought secondhand. I think when I was about 4 years old, I remember some very cold trips in that car going up to the Blue Mountains in winter with no heater and of course, no radio. And we all had to take blankets and other stuff to keep us warm.

DB: And that was the special. Now, you raced an E H. Holden was their great success with that.

AF: I wouldn't say great success. It was a bog-standard, Holden EH1 7 9 manual, so it had a large 179 cubic inch motor and manual transmission. It was not the much-coveted S4, which was a special Bathurst edition that Holden put together to try and win us, which had slightly better brakes and a few other things. But I wouldn't say it was greatly successful. But in its class, which I think was in 2000 to 3000 cc category for standard production cars on a good day, I could be up in the sort of second or third place, get a situation.

DB: Did it have a 179 badge on the back? They were special.

AF: They were. Yes. And thankfully, mine stayed on the back of the car and didn't become a belt buckle, which happened to a lot of other 179 batches.

DB: The EH that you raced went out with a bang?

AF: Yes, it did. I was competing at a hill climb at Amaroo Park in the early 70s and trying to better my times. It was towards the end of the day. And I think I'd had about six runs and I was going for a really good time on what would have been my second last run. And as I revved the car to its limit in first gear, I heard an almighty bang and I thought the worst. I thought I'd blown the motor. But as it turned out, the bang was created by one of the fan blades coming off the fan and actually almost piercing right through the bonnet. The fan blade was actually sticking out through the bonnet, and thankfully the rest of the motor in the car was alright. So the solution was to actually remove the whole fan blade assembly and then another frame friendly and helpful competitor managed to have a hacksaw in his tool kit and so we sawed off the other half of the blade that was still attached to the assembly and put it back on the car. So I limped home with a two-bladed rather than a four-bladed fan. Thankfully, didn't get stuck in heavy traffic, so didn't overheat.

DB: You did that for balance, didn't you?

AF: Yes, absolutely. Because otherwise, it had three blades on the fan and of course, one of them was completely offset by not having its mate on the other side of the hub. So it would have been a very noisy and vibrating sort of operation of the engine if we hadn't taken the other blade off.

DB: Alan lovely to talk to you. Thank you very much for your time.

AF: Thanks, David. Always, always happy to talk.

DB: That's Alan Finlay, a person who came from a family of devout Holden owners for a while until final reality settled in with times that were a-changing.

Hello and welcome to Overdrive, a program that practices what it preaches, most of the time, on the subject of cars and transport.

This week we concentrate on Holden, that famous Australia car brand that will soon cease to exist.

In the news

1. From Craft to economies of scale (1:22)

2. General Motors did the Holden name well (2:32)

3. Was the first Holden that good (3:37)

4. Button plan (4:32)

5. Did Holden build the wrong type of cars (5:39)

6. And we hear from a range of people whose families owned holdens from the first model.

• Fred Brain and 1969 350 Monaro (6:52)

• Terry Thompson owning old Holden (15:53)

• Alan Finlay – racing and EH (21:02

You can find more information at Driven Media or previous programs are available as podcasts on iTunes or Spotify. OR our Facebook site OverdriveCity

So, let’s start with the news

Originally broadcast 22 February 2020

Hello and welcome to Overdrive a program that samples and savours the world of cars and transport

1. Coronavirus leads to parts shortage (1:18)

2. Hyundai/Canoo to co-develop all-electric platform (2:05)

3. Mazda CX-30 (2:58)

4. Audi Sales – at last some good news (3:48)

5. Formula 1: 'carbon neutral' by 2030? (4:36)

6. And car ads at the Superbowl

• Audi’s weird one (5:52)

• Kia’s sentimental one (14:14)

• Genesis’ attempt at humour (18:03)

You can find more information at Driven Media or previous programs are available as podcasts on iTunes or Spotify. OR our Facebook site OverdriveCity

So, let’s start with the news

Originally broadcast 15 February 2020

Hello and welcome to Overdrive where we climb the hills, tackle the bends and endure the potholes of issues to do with motoring and transport.

1. Volkswagen leads in global sales (1:25)

2. Jaguar Land Rover’s better seat (2:22)

3. DeLorean comeback (3:26)

4. Honk more, wait more (4:26)

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6. We hear from BMW about their latest update you can get over the internet (6:52)

7. We have an interview with Damien Meredith from Kia on what is different in buyers minds now from the past and (11:52)

8. We have a chat with Brian smith on making people movers look less ugly (17:14)

You can find more information at Driven Media or previous programs are available as podcasts on iTunes or Spotify. OR our Facebook site OverdriveCity

So, let’s start with the news

Originally broadcast 8 February 2020

Damien Meredith is the Chief Operating Officer for Kia Australia.

He is a down to earth bloke that knows that his first task is to sell cars now, which will then provide the foundation for future developments.

In the full year of 2019 when the market declined by 7.8%, Kia did what no other top ten manufacturer did, it increased its sales over 2018 volumes.

It is not all wonder and light. The increase was due to a 16.5% increase in Kia’s Cerato. All their other models decreased, although the reduction was mostly better than average. Part of the decline may have been some cannibalising of existing model sales by their new Seltos small SUV that they bought onto the market in mid-October and by the end of the year it had sold over 2,000 vehicles.

Towards the end of 2020, they will bring in an even smaller SUV, the Stonic.

We caught up with Damien, in a bit of a noisy area at the Australian Open Tennis tournament for which Kia is the major sponsoring partner.

Hello and welcome to Overdrive, a program that ponders the philosophical and the practical aspects of motoring and transport.

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• Motoring Minute – Maserati Levante SUV (2:17)

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• Motoring Minute – Maserati Levante SUV (16:38)

• Banjo Paterson and transport data (17:49)

• Quirky news – Road testing a Kombi (20:33)

You can find more information at Driven Media or previous programs are available as podcasts on iTunes or Spotify. OR our Facebook site OverdriveCity

So, let’s start with the news

Originally broadcast 1 February 2020