1948: The Holden Arrives

The rejection of Project 2008 and dismissal of Lawrence Hartnett had established what the Australian car wouldn't be. So, what would it now be?

Russ
The engineer with the most responsibilty for the Holden was an American named Russell S. Begg. Born in Columbus, Ohio in 1887, Russ had graduated with an engineering degree from the University of Michigan in 1909, working for a slew of early U.S. automobile companies like Rambler, Hudson and Stutz.

Before joining General Motors, his most notable employer had been the Budd Company, famed for pioneering all-stainless steel bodies for railway carriages in an era when most used timber body-on-frame construction. Conventional wisdom said without the flex and give of timber, an all-steel carriage would only shake itself to pieces – and even if it didn't, nobody had yet found a way to affix stainless steel (so desirable for its anti-corrosion properties) to ordinary carbon steel. The result had always been a galvanic reaction that corroded the carbon steel almost immediately. Budd solved these dilemmas by developing new welding techniques, and building their carriages as monocoques that were stronger and lighter than anything else on the market. Because they were welded together rather than bolted, Budd carriages stood up to vibration and took decades to develop leaks – "Budd Don't Break" assumed the status of a religious mantra among American rail fans. In fact, they broke so seldom that Budd actually drove themselves out of business: Since their customers never needed to order replacements, the company went bust at the end of the 1980s.

Coming from a company with such a firm grounding in metallurgy and monocoque construction, it's no wonder Begg was known to be an innovative, even radical thinker. When he joined GM in 1934, Begg was immediately dispatched to Europe to work for their Opel division. Adolf Hitler had just become Chancellor of Germany, and his first major political act had been to remove all sales tax on new cars. To wage their intended war, the Nazis knew they'd need a vibrant motor industry which could be converted quickly to produce tanks and aircraft. For GM, this was an invitation to make the huge investment necessary to create a whole new range of Opels.

Between 1934 and 1939, Russ had transformed Opel's range of cars. First out the gate was the four-cylinder Opel Olympia, unveiled at the 1936 Berlin motor show and named for that year's Berlin Olympics, where black athlete Jesse Owens, "single-handedly crushed Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy," by winning four gold medals. The Olympia was soon followed up by its bigger brother, the Kapitän. The first car to combine the lightness of a monocoque body with the performance of a six-cylinder engine, the Kapitän was a luxury grand tourer bred for high-speed cruising on Germany's new-fangled autobahns. Begg understood the inherent lightness of monocoque bodies meant they could replace an old model with a lighter vehicle of the same size, which would perform better and use less fuel, or develop a bigger and better-equipped car that would weigh no more than its predecessor. Remarkably, the car the Kapitän replaced (the Opel Super Six) had been introduced a mere 18 or so months earlier, giving a clue about the pace of change at Opel in those days. Begg's Kapitän weighed just 13kg more than the Super Six despite being 250mm longer – and although it had been introduced late in 1938, the interruption of World War II meant there had been little development in the seven years since. So when a white-haired Begg was appointed to the Australian car project in 1944, it was still pretty much state-of-the-art. 

The raw material he'd be working with, however, was all-American. Experimental Light Car 195-Y-15 is often described as a Chevrolet reject, and while that's not technically correct, it is spiritually correct, if that makes sense. It had been commissioned by GM's Product Study Group as early as 1936, either as a result of the success of the Olympia, or simply as small-class car to complement to the larger GM models coming down the pipeline (a sensible project for a company in the latter stages of the Great Depression). So it was actually a generic GM design, but as GM's entry-level brand in the U.S., and also the brand that usually represented them overseas, it was Chevrolet's people that took the most interest, and the project was placed under the supervision of Chevrolet's chief design engineer, Earle Steele MacPherson¹.

In 1937, GM's Project Study Group had built two prototypes, most likely in the Research Labs behind the old GM building on West Grand Boulevard, Detroit. They had been allocated project numbers 195-Y-13 for the four-cylinder version, and 195-Y-15 for the six-cylinder: Both were given 3-speed transmissions without synchromesh on first gear, leaf springs and 4.215:1 final drive. Both were clad in 1938 Chevy panels and given 132ci engines, as the purpose of the project had been to evaluate which engine would deliver the best performance in a car of around 2,000lb (both in the sense of power and speed, but also in the sense of fuel economy, maintenance costs, etc). The six, which brought the car to a total of 2,084lb (i.e. about 945 kg), won decisively: It cost little more to build, used barely any more fuel and imposed less strain on its 3-speed gearbox, while also delivering more power and higher speeds in general². 

The strength beneath the skin: Holden's monocoque, as detailed in the sales brochure.

GM decided 195-Y-15 would be the basis for, "Australian Car Program 195Y25" (no hyphens)³. Since the car was basically a finished product, this allowed them to short-cut all the tedious engine, transmission and suspension development programmes, with one important exception: The design as it existed was compromised by weight-saving flimsiness and would have to be considerably beefed-up to stand up to Australian conditions. This was the task to which Russ Begg, in his role as chief engineer, would have to apply his considerable talent.

From the outset, Begg ran into differences of opinion with his superior Walter Appel, chief engineer of General Motors Overseas Operations. Conventional wisdom at this time was to link low cost and low performance: If you wanted to keep weight down, you also kept engine size and output low so as to impose lower stresses on the frame. Begg didn't see things this way. In a fascinating letter uncovered by Dr John Wright, engineer George Quarry wrote to then-managing director Lawrence Hartnett about his experiences after taking a test drive with Begg in Detroit in 1946:

Russ, Kuip and I were out in the 2½ litre Kapitan sedan which, while weighing 2676 lbs. curb, with a 150.9 cubic motor on a 106.1" wheelbase, has very similar internal space and performance factor as our job (actually 90.3 compared with our 90.1). I told Russ that I felt that Australia would have accepted a somewhat reduced performance factor, especially if it had a beneficial effect on weight and cost; his reply was that such a move is quite in the other direction, as any substantially lower performance factor means a different and heavier transmission to handle the greatly increased second gear work.

Australian engineer Bill Abbott recalled that Appel expressed, "considerable doubts about Begg's high stress/low weight approach," and noted that Begg was, "A fanatic for weight saving, hence detailed weight estimates all along the line." Begg preferred to combine the 195-Y-15's weight (just on a tonne) with the Kapitän's power (45 kW). And despite Appel's objections, Begg got his way.

To provide the power, the Australian operation would have to build its own engines as well. Fortunately, Holden had gained some experience during the war, manufacturing aircraft powerplants, marine diesels and even torpedo engines for the armed forces. A simple road car engine ought not to have taxed the engineers too much, but the pressure was on as success or failure of the project depended on the engine being reliable, durable, frugal and affordable. Fortunately, GM built a jewel.

132ci Holden Grey engine, from the original sales brochure (Source: Unique Cars and Parts)

The straight-six engine that would soon be built at Fishermans Bend is often described as a pre-war Buick design, but as with dubbing the chassis a Chevrolet, that's more spiritually than technically true. It wouldn't take keen spanner-twirlers long to discover many parts from wrecked Buicks would fit the Aussie six, but so would components from Chevrolets, Pontiacs and even Bedfords. Technically then, it was GM engine, but all these engines owed their DNA to the original Buick straight-six built from 1914 to 1930. Make of that what you will.

Since the block would be painted battleship grey, the engine's enduring nickname became the Grey. It was a 2,170cc two-valve pushrod straight-six that would make a good compromise between the four-cylinder engines in the British Morrises, Vauxhalls and Austins (which managed to be both high-revving and gutless), and the V8s of American Chevrolets and Fords (that were thirsty and expensive). The main refinement Holden made was to the oiling system: Where the GM engine had an outdated splash-feed system to lubricate the big-end bearings, Holden opted for a fully-pressurised system of lubricating the crank journals. Aspiration was via a single Stromberg BXOV-1 carburettor, with spark provided by a Delco-Remy distributor. A low 6.5:1 compression ratio was selected to ensure reliability on Australia's wildly variable pump petrol. Dyno figures were the required 45 kW at 3,800rpm, with a maximum 135 Nm of torque coming on at 1,400rpm. Thanks to a 3-speed column-shift manual gearbox, that meant the car could smoothly go from walking pace to highway speeds without a single gear change – first and second were really only needed for standing starts.

Full-size clay model, c. 1946. Note at this stage the badge on the nose reads "Anzac" – more on that later. The swage line along the side was later deleted to simplify production.

With the mechanicals well on their way, a full-scale clay model was ready as soon as 18 September 1945, and then approved three days later. On 30 August 1946, the first prototype body was completed at Fisher Body Experimental, most likely somewhere in Detroit, although their Flint plant was also known to do low-volume work⁴. Body No.1 was the first of three prototypes, all of which were then assembled by hand in GM's Research Labs, using engine blocks and heads cast by Campbell, Wyant & Canon, or CWC of Muskegon, Michigan. They were then transported to one of Chevrolet's facilities (possibly Flint) for a basic shakedown, and then sent on to the Milford Proving Grounds where the real testing would begin.

Testing & Development
Opened in 1924, the Milford Proving Grounds cover some 4,000 acres roughly 80km from downtown Detroit. They remain the world's oldest continuously-operated proving grounds, with around 200km of road simulating the worst North America can throw at a motor vehicle. The 195-Y-15 prototype had already run up over 40,000km of testing here, and the three Australian prototypes spent another three months undergoing performance and durability testing before their programme was completed, on 4 December 1946. With that done, the three prototypes, as well as the Australian team and 22 American personnel and their families – some 75 people total – boarded a specially-chartered Canadian Pacific train for the trip from Detroit to Vancouver, British Columbia. From there, they all boarded the SS Wangenella for the voyage across the Pacific.

The Wangenella berthed in Melbourne on 28 December 1946, and according to legend the cars were driven to Fishermans Bend under the cover of darkness. They were then registered (as Chevrolets) in February 1947, with Prototype No. 1 receiving the registration JP-480, while 2 and 3 received 481 and 482, respectively. They then began an even more strenuous programme of testing under real-world conditions, all of it conducted on public roads. They were joined by a couple of real Chevrolets⁵ for comparison, in extensive tests that involved week-long thrashes along rural roads all over the Dandenong ranges, as well as inner-city work in Melbourne. One transmission test even involved towing a Bedford bus up Wheelers Hill in the eastern suburbs. According to the test crews, they would wear out three Chevrolets for every Holden.

With the three American prototypes earning their stripes, two further experimental cars were completed at Woodville. The first Australian prototype, known as Prototype No.4 but later registered as KJ-400, is the only other survivor of the five and was completed on 22 August 1947 (by which time Prototype No. 2 had completed over 48,000km of testing). It has a unique interior, and is "hundreds of kilograms" heavier than a production model thanks to a body filled and shaped in lead. Prototype No.5, a Gawler Cream unit registered as KY-442, was used for official photographs but has not survived to the present day.

That just left the question of what to call it. For a long time it was assumed that the car would bear the uninspiring name of "GM-H", but even that would've been preferable to some of the suggestions bandied about. Dr John Wright found the following memo, written by managing director Harold Bettle and dated 1 April 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.

Despite the date, it wasn't a joke. "Canbra Car Company" and "Melwood Motors" were serious suggestions, as were "Austral", "GeM", "Cook", "ANZAC", "Bligh", "Emu", "Boomerang", "Woomera" and "Pangali" (a male kangaroo, apparently).

Fortunately, Edward Riley, general manager of GMOO, had the good taste to recommend "Holden" instead. He argued that Holden was a good strong name that was familiar to the Australians, making it far more marketable than "GM-H". It was also possibly a tribute to the late Edward Holden ("Sir Edward" as of 1946 – the New Year's Honours list made him a Knight Bachelor), the last Holden to sit at the head of the Holden company. Ill health had forced him to resign in January 1947, and he died (of cerebro-vascular disease) only a few months later, on 17 June 1947, meaning he never got to see the public unveiling of the car that would carry his name. He was survived by a son and two daughters, one of whom would go on to be Dame Nancy Buttfield, the first woman to represent South Australia in the Senate.

So, on 1 September 1948, the decision was finalised and the upcoming car was christened the Holden, later also to be known by the designation 48-215, for its year of release and body style ("215" referred to the Standard sedan. The later Business sedan was assigned 217). The more colloquial "FX" was never official and dates to a few years later, when a dealer is rumoured to have adopted it from one of the suspension upgrade options... but nobody seems to know for sure.

"She's A Beauty"
The first of ten pilot-build cars was completed in the evening of 30 September 1948. Pilot production runs, a kind of dress rehearsal before the premiere, were a common practice in the motor industry. They were usually conducted off-line by a picked crew of experienced hands, in order to bed down the production process and sound out the local suppliers. The first of the ten was built from Body No.6, finished in Gawler Cream and fitted with engine No.1001, resulting in the VIN "8-1001-M". Although the car – the first production Holden ever built in this country – later came to be known as Old Number One, at the time it was simply registered with the plates MG-501, which it bore from 19 October 1948. Of the ten pilot-build cars, three went to the engineering department, five went to manufacturing and one went to the general sales manager, with Old Number One becoming the daily drive of managing director Harold Bettle himself. It thus also holds the distinction of being the first Holden ever stolen, pinched from Bettle's garage in Toorak and taken for a joyride shortly after the model's launch – a proud tradition many Holden owners would still be partaking in decades later!

Trove is a wonderful thing.

The first people to be shown the car were, naturally enough, the Victorian dealer network, who got acquainted with their new charge in a private function held at the Oriental Hotel in Melbourne (now the site of the Collins Place skyscraper). It wasn't until three days later that the public got its first look, as 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.

At 2:30pm, in the Fishermans Bend Social Hall, the crowd broke into applause as the silver curtains parted to reveal a Gawler Cream Holden rotating on a plinth, sparkling under the spotlights, while the orchestra set the ambience with Brahms' Waltz in A-flat. The Australian motor industry's day of days had arrived: The Holden was officially on sale.

That famous photo of Chifley with Old Number One at the launch party, 1948.

Chifley famously remarked, "She's a beauty," and he had every reason to be proud. The man who rebuilt Australia after World War II had now brought the country its first car – only the carburettor (a U.S.-made Stromberg), fuel pump, instrument panel (also American), starter motor and generator (Canadian) were not locally-made. That was enough to hit the federal government's targets for local content, but it wasn't enough to ward off conspiracy theories that the early models ran CWC blocks cast in Canada. There doesn't appear to be any evidence for this: Old Holdens aren't exactly thick on the ground anymore, but there are surviving examples from this period, and none of them have CWC marks on the blocks.

Tumbleweeds?
From the moment it arrived, the Holden was the most in-demand vehicle in Australia – there were 18,000 orders on the first day. And it's no wonder, once you consider the other cars available at the time. Because it would take the factory three years to catch up with demand, Australia's top-seller from 1948 through to 1951 was actually the four-door Austin A40 Devon (and its two-door derivative, the Dorset) – for many Australians, their first-ever new car. Smaller and less spacious than the Holden, it was really at home in the narrow lanes and pretty rural villages of the U.K. The huge distances between Australia's country towns (let alone the capital cities), appalling roads and sometimes very high temperatures left the poor Austin rather out of its depth. People liked it well enough but it was far from ideal.

Pictured: Your standard British misery box.

In stark contrast, the Holden carried five adults and their bags in comfort, promised "80 miles per hour and 30 miles per gallon," and, by the standards of the day, pulled like a train. The Grey ran near-silent, providing enough torque to tick over in top gear for hours on end, tough, unstressed, sipping fuel, eating up the miles. As Dr John Wright said in his book, Heart of the Lion: "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." Zero to 100km/h in 18.7 seconds and on to a top speed of 130km/h mightn't sound like much today, but it was about the same as a contemporary Ford Deluxe, and those needed a 239ci Flathead V8 to do it! Compared to a Standard Eight, with its 1.0-litre side-valve engine, the Holden must have been a revelation.

Most importantly, it really did suit the tough Australian conditions. At the insistence of Australian engineer Jack Rawnsley, Begg had built in 9 inches of ground clearance, and he was right to do so. Unlike proper First World countries (which Australia was still in the process of becoming), the Land Down Under had very little bitumen and most of what existed was in the cities. The Nullarbor wouldn’t be fully sealed until 1976, and even the Hume Highway from Sydney and Melbourne – the largest arterial road in the country – mostly wasn't daubed with hot mix either. But the low kerb weight and simple-but-effective suspension meant the Holden tended to skip over rough patches rather than dive into them, so the car could handle the corrugations on the back roads where British cars shed their suspension components trying to cope (although the rear leaves tended to crack on the very early editions, proving it was a problem not even Holden managed to dodge at first). And the dust sealing was excellent, an easy factor to overlook until you were stuck behind a semi-trailer churning up the bulldust. 

The production line at Fishermans Bend, 1949.

Worse than being unsealed, the Hume was mostly undivided as well, which brought to light the value of the Holden's acceleration. With its 1.2-litre four-cylinder engine, the Austin A40 needed more than 20 seconds to reach 80km/h, which was its highest practical (albeit noisy) cruising speed. Overtaking a semi-trailer took planning and a long stretch with good visibility, which could be tough to find in an age before overtaking lanes. In marked contrast, the Holden reached 80km/h in 13 seconds, could cruise all day at 100 and climbed hills (accelerating) in top gear where the Austin battled in the third of its three ratios. Trading up from an A40 to a 48-215 represented a major leap forwards.

But it was still no dream machine, in many ways the height of postwar austerity. The interior was trimmed in either leather or woollen body cloth, and there were only four colours – Convoy Grey, Seine Blue, Gawler Cream and Black – all of them (except Black) entirely suitable for hospital decor. To hasten production, the factory had deliberately left off a lot of stuff that today we'd consider non-negotiable: With fewer cars on the road then nobody saw a problem with fitting only one, centrally-positioned rear light, and there were no turn indicators at all. Only the passenger's side got a locking door, and only the driver got a sun visor. The flipper windows could be opened, but any further ventilation was effected with the adjustable air scoop situated between the bonnet and windscreen. The only radio was an "Air Chief 5" model, and it was an expensive optional extra, as were the rear Venetian blinds, locking petrol cap and heavy-duty oil bath air cleaner. Since most of the population lived in a mild, Mediterranean climate, both weight and cost had been saved by fitting a small 6-volt battery. There was no heater, so demisting was effected by a sleeve or handkerchief. And even if the Grey was stronger than just about anything else on the market, the vacuum-powered wipers would still struggle if stuck climbing a long hill on a rainy night. The only way to get some vision was to pump the clutch and let them breathe, which may or may not draw a sharp horn application from the truck driver behind you.

But to the locals it was the coolest thing ever, and people thought it was well-equipped – to a generation that had spent childhood in the Depression and young adulthood at war, a car, any car, was more than they'd ever expected to have. Certainly you got more for your money than any Vauxhall or Chevrolet of the time, which brings us to the thorny question of cost. To put it bluntly, the Holden was expensive, burdened with a price tag of £675 ($50,600 in 2023) at a time when the average factory worker took home only £296 a year (just over $20,000). And that was before on-roads, by the way: Add insurance, registration and tax, and you were looking at more like £760 to buy one ($57,000).

And let's not forget, it launched just as the last of the WWII rationing was scrapped and the Korean War broke out, leading to a spike in inflation, so the price rose noticeably over the next few years. On 16 August 1949, The Canberra Times sullenly revealed a Holden would cost £22 ($1,500) more. On 19 October 1950, the Holden increased again, from £740 to £770 ($53,000). And by 12 January 1951 – about the time we reached peak inflation – that £770 had risen to £805 if you wanted the cloth trim ($50,400), and £815 ($51,000) if you went with leather. You'll notice, however, that in real terms the price was actually going down, a result of ever-increasing wages as the economy boomed. Harold Bettle got on the record to confirm that the price hikes were driven by the rising cost of raw materials and, yes, a heavier payroll burden – but the same payroll burden, allied to more consumer credit, meant that, for the first time ever, the means existed for the working class to buy a car.

For what it's worth, the same October 1950 article mentioned the Vauxhall Wyvern Tourer and Chevrolet sedan had also become more expensive, rising to £600 ($37,600) and £1,109 ($63,250), respectively. Even second-hand, a Ford V8 – top of the sales charts in 1946 and '47, mostly because the stretched Mercury version accounted for the bulk of police fleet sales – would set you back anywhere from £725-£900 ($56,400). In short, it was possible to spend a lot more money, and get a lot less car, than you got with a Holden.

It's not bragging if you can back it up: the 100,000th Holden leaves the factory, May 1953.

The production numbers told the whole story. By Christmas Day of 1948, only 163 units had been completed, but production soon got into gear, rising from an initial ten cars per day to a hundred per day by 1951. Between them, Fishermans Bend and Pagewood would crank out 7,724 Holdens in 1949, and a further 20,190 in 1950. That figure would reach 30,000 by February 1951, then 60,000 by April 1952, topping out at a grand total of 120,402 by the time it was replaced by the FJ – and it would've been a lot more if the factory could've kept up with demand. The British car makers, who had taken it for granted that Australia would remain "their" turf, were caught completely off-guard. Holden was on its way to becoming Australia's Own.

¹ Yes, inventor of the MacPherson strut.

² A third project, 195-Y-17, was later designed with a larger 174ci engine. No-one seems to know if it was actually built or not.

³ In my previous entry I said Project 2200 was the Woodville-designed car, but I think I misunderstood. That was listed in the GM style as Project 2000 and then 2008; Project 2200 was the model that ultimately became the Holden.

⁴ Fisher Body operated eight sites in Detroit, most famously Plant 21, but this high-volume facility almost certainly wouldn't have been responsible for such a minor project.

⁵ Probably either Stylemasters of Fleetmasters, the 1946 updates of the 1941 Chevrolet Deluxe.