The history of the Holden company goes back long before the days of the motor car. James Alexander Holden migrated from Staffordshire, England, to Adelaide in 1852, he was just seventeen years old at the time.
Holden soon got involved in leather work, setting up a shop in King WIlliam Street, Adelaide to do leather worker and make saddles. Business was soon booming and in the middle 1860s J.A. Holden & Co. Merchants, Importers, and Wholesale Saddlers moved to bigger and better premises.
In 1879 James Holden took his 20-year-old son Henry James Holden into the business and, in 1885, accepted German-born Henry Frederick Frost as a junior partner in what was later to become Holden & Frost Ltd.
After the death of James Alexander Holden, Holden at the age of just 52 in 1887, Henry Holden become the senior partner. By then, the company was operating in the vehicle business, repairing abd building horse-drawn carriages and coaches.
In 1905 a third generation Holden, Henry’s son, Edward Wheewall Holden, joined Holden & Frost. By the the company had a toehold in the car business, repairing car upholstery, and was soon manufacturing hoods and side curtains for automobiles.
After the death of Frost in 1909, Henry Holden bought his late partner’s shares and went about building motorcycle sidecar bodies.
In 1913 Holden & Frost produced its first complete custom-made car body using laborious carriage-building techniques.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, William Crapo Durant had founded General Motors Corporation (GMC). With the Buick Motor Company as his backbone, Durant went on a buying spree which netted him what was to become the biggest corporation in the history of automotive manufacturing in the world and the largest corporation in the USA.
Fisrt it was Oldsmobile, the Cadillac, Oakland (later renamed Pontiac) and , finally the most succesful of all GM divisions, Chevrolet.
During the first year of GM’s opretaion, 14,0000 employees built no fewer than 25,000 cars and trucks!
With exports in mind, the GM Export Company was formed in 1911 and appointed a field representative to Australia. He was based in Sydney.
The first GM cars arrived in Australia just before the breakout of WWI. That war was to change the future of Holden in a big way.
As Germany’s unlimited submarine warfare affected Australia’s only source of international trade ? its shipping lanes ? the Federal Government introduced trade restrictions which included a covenant limiting the number of complete motor cars which could be imported. Only one complete car could be brought in for every three chassis, a rule which had a scondary aim of keeping Australian capital within Australia.
Holden was one of many organisations which saw an avenue for expansion. In 1917 the company moved into motor body building and made a full scale move into the fast-growing world of the automobile.
After building nearly a hundred bodies on Buick and Dodge chassis in its first year, Holden increased production to 587 in 1918 and then nearly 1600 just one year later.
Holden had revolutionised the industry by introducing state-of-the-art production machinery and developing designs which took a minimum of hand finishing. Not only did this greatly reduce the unit price but also established Holden’s reputation for value for money and quality.
The prosperity of the 1920s in America, dictated a constant rush of new car designs. It also made Holden so adept at responding to that challenge that it would import blueprints of forthcoming models and have the bodies ready and waiting to be installed by the time the chassing first hit Australian shores.
In April 1923, Edward W. Holden (Henry’s son and later knighted Sir Edward) toured Europe and the USA where he received indications from GM in the US of its desire to use Holden as its sole vehicle-body builder in Australia.
In 1924, after purchasing 22 acres of land, Holden opened its Woodville plant with one of the most modern production lines in the world.
In its first year, Holden produced no fewer than 65 different body styles and built 22,150 vehicles. By then, Holden was the single biggest body builder in Australia and had nearly 50 per cent of the market.
As well as car bodies, Holden also turned out railway carriages, bus and tram bodies and other items.
It was in the late 1920s that the famous Lion and Stone badge was first used by Holden. This symbol represented the legend of man’s invention of the wheel, which supposedly took place after a caveman watched the king of the animals rolling a stone under its paw. Updated on several occasions, this badge is still in use today.
With the arrival of the great depression, Holden’s Motor Body Builder began to have difficulties.
The GM Corporation started negotiations with the aim of purchasing Holden and succeeded in March 1931. The sum was astronomical in those days; nearly two and quarter million dollars.
Holden’s Motor Body Builder was the merged with GMA to form General Motors-Holden’s.
The aim of the merger was to save the Australian operations and as sales were slipping, the balance sheets were still red in colour. This was unacceptable to the Americans, hence their dispacth of Vauxhall Director and GM trouble shooter Larry Hartnett with the simple brief, ‘Fix it up or shut it down!”
Luckily for Holden, Larry Hartnett lived up to his company-saving reputation. Within one year the company had made a $1.5 million profit and lifted its sales to 23,129 (from a dismal 3674 the previous year!)
Within a year, thanks to the healthy sales atmosphere, GM-H had set up new headquarters and a new assembly plant at Fisherman’s Bend on 20 hectares of the land. There were provisions for a foundry and an engine shop.
So big was Hartnett’s vision for the company in Australia that he began discussing with GM-H executuves the possibility of building a locally manufactured car.
Undaunted by the failure of many others who had tried to build an Australian car, and replying on the immense backing from GM, Hartnett’s dream would have become a reality except for one factor that he did not bargaiin on. The advent of another world war!
WWII converted the flourishing GM-H car assembly plant into a flourishing war-effort mass-production plant. So versatile was Holden that it produced aircraft marine and land engine as well as airplane frames, armoured cars, semi-trailers, troop carriers, boats and onther military hardware.
With the winding down of military contracts, GM-H revived its plants for Aussie car. Project 2000 seemed the best that GM-H engeineers could come up with and a prototype was completed in 1944 using Willys mechanical components.
Later in that year the Australian Federal Government issued a formal invitation for submissions from companies interested in producing an Australian car.
GM-H answered the call and undertook to carry out the whole project without subsidy or tariff assistance. GM USA approved the project but the GM Finance Committee turned down the request for finance, recommending instead that funds be found in Australia.
Six million dollars was the figure required and was provided by the Commonwealth Band and the Bank of Adelaide badning together to provide GM-H with the funds required, thanks to the backing of Ben Chifley, the Prime Minister.
The new-car team began working in earnest and soon came up with specifications for a vehicle that would be acceptable to Australians.
The US engineers had already something in mind. A Chevrolet-badged experimental car for around 1940 was the basis of their design and was found to almost a match to the Aussie specifications. They modified the styling and built a clay mock-up which was approved by the GM-H team.
With the styling complete work started on the American prototype. Three of those were hand-built and were virtually identical in appearance to the car that was eventually produced. They were tested in Detroit then late in 1946 they were packed and sent to Fisherman’s Bend, along with the Aussie Technicians and 22 of their US counterparts.
Those prototypes were extensively tested outside Melbourne. Structurally, they were good, but their handling left a lot to be desired judging by the number of times the test drivers speared off into the bush!
GM-H officials knew that if the car got a bad reputation at the start, their vast investment would be jeopardised so they put considerable effort into rectifying any shortcomings.
The name of the new car was a highly guarded secret. Two names under consideration were GMH and ANZAC. The final decision for HOLDEN was not arrived at untill shortly before production commenced in 1948.
Hartnett was replaced as head of the car building project in December 1946 after serious disagreements over numerous things, chiefly funding. Not surprisingly, he responded to this demotion by tendering his resignation. Larry Hartnett spent the next forty years in the industry and was knighted for his services.
The new GM-H head was Harold Bettle, a senior US executive who oversaw the project through 1947 and 1948.
After conducting a secret run for ten cars in April 1948 to test the final product and iron out the bugs, the all clear was given. On the 29th of November 1948, the first of the 48/215 Holdens rolled off the assembly line at Fisherman’s Bend with great fanfare.
Prime Minister Chiefly greeted the fisrt Holdens as it left the factory and Australians responded with great excitement. After enduring years of rationing and wartime sacrifices this locally made car somehow signified a new age of prosperity.
The Holden legend was born!
