Taking a Third Option: 1957 Chrysler Royal AP1

The rise of Chrysler Australia in many ways parallels that of Holden. Both companies began as Adelaide coachbuilders in the 19th Century, and both made the shift to motor vehicles begrudgingly, under the influence of the founders' offspring. But where Holden seemed to live a charmed life, only ever going from strength to strength, Chrysler spent its entire life parked in Struggle Street. 

Protestant Work Ethic
As GM-H began with James Alexander Holden, so Chrysler Australia began with a man: Tobias John Martin Richards. Born in Montacute, South Australia in 1850, he learned his trade as a coachbuilder and blacksmith working for Ludwig Maraun of Pirie Street, Adelaide – only a block over from the Grenfell Street premises of Holden & Frost. By 1885, Richards had the means to strike out on his own, founding T.J. Richards Ltd in what was then West Mitcham, south of Adelaide. Richards became a respected name in the business, responsible for a number of award-winning buggies and coaches – most notably his plush "King of the Road" sulky. The business did well, and in 1900 T.J. Richards expanded to a new half-acre premises on the west side of Hindmarsh Square. In 1907 the workshop was expanded to two storeys, and the old West Mitcham shop was wound up as no longer necessary. By the time Richards retired in 1911, the business was valued at £25,000 (nearly $4.3 million in 2024). 

Where it all began: the original workshop at Mitcham.

During this time, Richards' dearly-beloved, Matilda, had borne him nine children. Six of their offspring were sons, of whom four eventually went into their father's business in some capacity or another. Eldest son Herbert had a strained relationship with the old man, so he left to strike out on a motor business venture of his own. That left the company to his second and third sons, Henry and Claude respectively, which was renamed T.J. Richards & Sons in their honour. After Henry tragically died in a motorcycle accident in May 1915, Claude became the sole company head.

Like their cross-town rivals at Holden & Frost, T.J. Richards & Sons gravitated across to motor vehicles only slowly, producing their first experimental car body in 1905. Tobias refused to consider that the horse might ever be supplanted and never owned a car himself, so it was largely the enthusiasm of Claude that drove their investigation into this new industry. T.J. Richards & Sons made their last horse-drawn vehicle in 1915.

The Keswick plant. (Source: State Library of SA)

After the Great War, T.J. Richards & Sons feasted on the bonanza of imported chassis in need of bodies, constructing them for brands as diverse as Austin, Citroën, Fiat, Morris, Studebaker, Dodge Brothers and Hudson. In February 1920, the company bought a three-acre site at the northern corner of Bay Road (soon to be Anzac Highway) and Leader Street, for £1,900 ($168,000). Although technically located in Forestville, it became known as the Keswick plant because it lay just south of the Keswick Army Barracks (now the Army Museum of South Australia). By April 1925, the Keswick plant had been extended along Leader Street to cover nearly seven acres. By mid-1926, the company employed 425 people building more than 5,000 bodies a year on simple production lines, resulting in annual turnover of some £200,000 (more than $20 million). By 1928, Richards was the second-largest body-builder in Australia, behind only (of course) Holden's Motor Body Builders Ltd. Between them, Richards and Holden's produced about 80 percent of Australia's car, truck and tram bodies in those days.

Walt
Around the same time, former Buick manager Walter P. Chrysler took over the ailing Maxwell Motor Company in the United States and reformed it into his shiny new Chrysler Corporation. Maxwell had been hit hard by the post-WWI recession and found themselves deeply in debt, with spiralling build quality issues killing all demand for their cars. Having performed corporate resuscitations like this before (most notably with Willys-Overland), Walter Chrysler took on the challenge and moved his headquarters to their Highland Park office in Detroit, Michigan. Chrysler soon absorbed the Dodge Brothers Company and, following the tenets of Sloanism, founded the Plymouth and DeSoto brands in 1928. If you wore overalls and worked for a wage, you bought a Plymouth; if you wore a button-up shirt and worked for a salary, you bought a Dodge or DeSoto. And if you wore a full suit and didn't need to work at all, only then could you contemplate a luxurious Chrysler or Imperial.

Soon Chrysler was looking to expand overseas, and naturally his eye was drawn to Australia. In January 1930, T.J Richards & Sons signed a contract with Chrysler for the manufacture of 5,000 Dodge and DeSoto bodies. The deal was worth a colossal £500,000 (over $52 million in 2024), so to fulfil it Richards bought a new 5.7-acre site on the northern side of Scotland Road, just to the west of Adelaide in Mile End South. Ironically, this plant had lately been the home of South Australia's Ford distributors, Duncan & Fraser Ltd, who'd just been (quite deliberately) driven out of business by Ford Australia. The site, running between Railway Terrace and the Holdfast Bay railway line, cost £17,500 ($1.8 million) and opened in early 1931.

The distinctive "Chrysler Dodge Plymouth DeSoto" sign was a local landmark for decades.

Unfortunately, by the time the plant opened Australia was in the heart of the Great Depression, and as Chrysler were forced to drastically wind back production, so imports of chassis into Australia dried up. For the financial year 1931-'32, T.J. Richards posted losses of more than £31,000 ($3.6 million), and their employee payroll dropped to just 98 workers, all at Keswick. Thankfully, August 1932 saw them land a £100,000 ($12.3 million) contract to manufacture a thousand bodies for the Standard company of Britain, pulling the company back from the brink. By mid-1934, they were firmly on the rebound, back to employing around 1,400 workers – 900 at Keswick, which concentrated on metal stamping and fabrication, and 500 at Mile End South, which was dedicated to assembly. By 1935, Richards was producing 11,000 bodies per year – forty a day – and they were able to pay shareholders their first dividend since 1930. Profits for the decade peaked at £45,106 (just over $5.2 million) for the financial year 1936-'37.

It was at this point the dealers came knocking. In December 1936, the eighteen largest Chrysler distributors in Australia had decided to unionise merge to increase their bargaining power with Highland Park. The resulting company became Chrysler Dodge Distributors (Australia) Ltd, and they quickly began throwing their weight around. With Ford now consolidated in Geelong and Holden's Motor Body Builders Ltd recently absorbed into GM, they needed to move quickly to secure their supply chain. Their gaze naturally turned to the largest supplier of Chrysler bodies in the country, T.J. Richards & Sons, in which they bought a controlling interest. Reassuring any jittery workers that their jobs would remain secure, CDD allowed Richards to renew or pursue fresh contracts with rival brands like Packard, Standard, Studebaker and Willys-Overland, and in mid-1938 they moved their headquarters from Melbourne to Adelaide.

With these windfalls, T.J. Richards & Sons was able to upgrade both Keswick and Mile End South, with all paint shop and upholstering duties transferred to the latter. By May 1938, Richards employed 3,280 workers and had a turnover close to £2 million ($227 million) – a ten-fold increase on 1930. That same year they also beat Holden to the punch when they produced Australia's – and indeed one of the world's – first all-steel car bodies. Developed under the influence of Maurice Richards, grandson of Tobias, the "Safe-T-Steel" body consisted of a single-piece steel roof, one-piece steel body panels and doors, and a steel floor, all welded together into a single unit. From 1937, all Richards-made Chryslers were fabricated in steel.

Then of course war returned, and T.J. Richards & Sons – like Holden and Ford before them – were subsumed into the Department of Munitions, producing land mine casings, ammunition boxes, cable drums and mountings for 2-pounder anti-tank guns. In September 1941, the company renamed itself Richards Industries Ltd, feeling it was more in-keeping with their expanded portfolio, and after 1942 they focused almost exclusively on aircraft panels, such as for the Bristol Beaufort, Avro Lancaster bomber and CAC Wirraway trainer.

Chrysler Australia Ltd
Once peace returned, Richards Industries wasted no time reverting back to motor vehicles, expanding the Mile End South facility again and, in September 1949, buying the wartime aircraft factory for £37,175 ($2.6 million). Although progress was slowed by post-war resource shortages, by mid-1946 Richards was already producing more than 500 bodies per week, and employing more than 2,500 workers (up from a wartime minimum of 2,000).

In October 1947 the inevitable finally happened, as CDD finally acquired one-hundred percent of Richards Industries Ltd – securing the company's future, but also ending the family's association with the business their ancestor had founded. Association with other marques was wound up as they focused on Chrysler products. By 1950, Mile End South was approaching its maximum extent of nine acres, and assembly of an almost-complete vehicle from sub-assembled panels took just thirteen minutes. Their net profit for 1949-'50 was £156,330 (more than $10 million) – almost double that of two years earlier – while gross turnover was £4.75 million ($309 million), more than twenty times what they'd seen before the war.

Numbers like that attracted attention, and at long last the Chrysler Corporation itself began to take notice. As early as 1949 there were rumours the U.S. giant was looking to assume full control of CDD, but the consortium rejected an initial £700,000 ($45.5 million) takeover offer in November 1950. Undeterred, in June 1951, Chrysler finally succeeded in buying 85 percent of CDD's ordinary shares and thereby gained a controlling interest in the company, which they promptly renamed to reflect its new status. Chrysler Australia Ltd was in business.

They hit the ground running. October 1951 saw the new bosses embark on a £1 million ($55 million) modernisation and expansion programme, including reorganising Mile End South in accordance with American mass-production techniques. A range of minor parts (such as steering boxes) were made at the Perry Engineering foundry and stamping plants, adjacent to Mile End South. They brought in the dies and tooling to begin stamping panels for the latest 1953 Plymouth, which was then sold as the Plymouth Cranbrook, Dodge Kingsway and DeSoto Diplomat – same cars underneath, just with different grilles and badging. It was a cynical attempt to appeal to more affluent buyers, but we've already established that the Kingsway cost £1,787, so affluent buyers were likely to be the only kind...

Rather gorgeous promotional image of the Diplomat. "1956" plate on 1953 curves unnecessary to know this is a local image, just check the hills behind them. This could only be Australia.

The engine was Chrysler's side-valve "PowerFlow" inline six, a lump that hadn't meaningfully changed since the 1930s (nor would it before it was replaced in the early 1960s). This engine came as a crate unit from Chrysler's U.K. plant in Kew, west London, so although not local content it was at least being sourced within the Commonwealth, helping keep costs manageable. Despite a 230ci displacement, it could offer only 22 kW more than Holden's 132ci Grey, a problem when the car's full chassis meant a kerb weight of 1,512kg.

Few were head over heels for a Cranbrook, and fewer still even bought a Diplomat, but the Chrysler trinity nevertheless found their groove as tough rural cruisers that could handle rough roads without complaint and tolerate dodgy local petrol. In an Australia starved for new cars they actually sold pretty well, with 4,382 of them leaving the plants between 1951 and 1953. By 1954 the reorganisation of the assembly line was complete, a new paint shop and finishing line were in operation, and net profits rose to £858,388 ($38 million). Mid-1955 saw the company invest another £275,000 ($12 million) in a new plant at Mile End South, while another £500,000 went into a spare parts division at Keswick. Chrysler Australia now employed 4,300 workers, many of them newly-arrived immigrants.

Not strictly relevant, but I couldn't resist including this image (dated 17 Oct 1954) of a Chrysler Plymouth hire car that's had a crash with a tram on Pitt Street, Sydney. The relationship between Chrysler Australia and the hire car industry started early. (Source: SMH Archive via Facebook)

But despite this promising start to the decade, the outlook turned bleak after 1955. By the mid-1950s, Chrysler's offerings were being out-styled by the Chevrolet Bel Air, Ford Customline and, yes, the new FE Holden. The Cranbrook's shape – rounded, upright, rather stodgy – was rapidly going out of fashion as wide, flat and low-slung became the name of the game. The twin flat windscreens, although wonderfully cheap to make, gave it away as a design from the 1940s, with engine and suspension technology to match. Having started with a 10 percent market share in 1950, Chrysler gradually slipped to 4.8 percent by 1956. At this time, Holden's market share was climbing towards 50 percent, Ford enjoyed 15 percent, and even BMC Australia – recently formed from the merger of Austin and Morris – were managing about the same. Something had to be done.

What they really needed was one of the new designs being released by their parent company in the U.S. – something like the rather handsome 1955 Chrysler 300, which was making waves in early NASCAR. But this was out of the question: Highland Park was in fact in the process of paying back an enormous $250 million loan from Prudential Insurance (more than $3 billion in today's USD), so they were in no position to fund a whole new range for Australia. It was the familiar Catch-22 of the car industry, needing a new model to generate sales, but needing more sales to justify investment in the new model. Backed into a corner, Chrysler Australia's only option was to repackage what they already had, and just pray that the market fell for it. This was the line of thinking that led Chrysler to develop their first uniquely Australian model.

The Royal Treatment
The challenge confronting Chrysler Australia's tiny team of stylists and engineers was simple: how to cobble together a vehicle that looked new and fresh enough to revamp interest, when they weren't able to change any of the underlying tooling?

Through 1955, a small team of Australian and American designers tackled this very problem, looking for ways of adapting U.S. designer Virgil Exner's new "Forward Look" styling cues – long bonnets, low rooflines and huge fins – to a shape from the 1940s. The roof and doors of the '53 sedan were kept, but onto the front end they grafted the headlight surrounds, bonnet and grille of the upcoming U.S.-market '57 Plymouth. 

Promo image for the '57 Plymouth. That Chrysler Corp made some of the most ornate cars of their day is brought home when you remember this was meant to be the entry-level brand.

The front and rear guards were borrowed from the '56 Plymouth, while the rear quarter panels were redesigned with dramatic full-length fins. The front windscreen remained flat, but it became a single large piece instead of split like that on the old Cranbrook. They did add a properly Fifties wrap-around windscreen (creating development problems for Pilkington Glass, the Australian suppliers who struggled to get the right curved shape...) but then they put it at the wrong end, using it at the rear of the glasshouse instead of the front where it belonged! But considering the budget they had to work with, and the fact that Chrysler Australia didn't yet have a formal styling department, it was all kind of impressive.

By early 1956, seven disguised prototypes were busy racking up the miles on the back roads of South Australia, their identity hidden by the simple expedient of tying down tarps front and rear. Not even Holden had their own proving grounds yet, so open-road testing was still the industry standard. It might've been crude, but the prototypes logged over 100,000 miles with only minimal changes required before production could begin. But not everything went so smoothly.

Amazing how the simple device of removing the hub caps to expose the pressed-steel wheels underneath makes any car look like a junker on its way to the panel-beater.

Halfway through 1956, body engineer Doug Rohrsheim was busy attending meetings with Diecast Ltd to finalise supply of the various pieces of brightwork needed for the upcoming cars. The plan had been to carry through the Plymouth Belvedere, Dodge Kingsway and DeSoto Diplomat in order to supply their three dealer franchises. They were to be differentiated by separate badges, bonnet ornaments, grilles and wheel arches, with the Dodge earning a body-coloured split grille divider in the shorter front clip. The original designations for the three models had been AD1 for the Dodge, AS1 for the DeSoto and AP1 for the Plymouth.

At the last minute, however, chief engineer Roy Rainsford cancelled the Dodge and DeSoto versions, voiding most of the work Rohrsheim had just done. The Plymouth was to be the only game in town, and despite its lowly appointments, it would be sold as a Chrysler. It was at this point that it was finally given the "Royal" nameplate, resurrecting a name that had gone extinct in the U.S. a few years earlier. Instead of Australian Plymouth, the AP1 designation was retroactively changed to stand for "Australian Production": hence, the Chrysler Royal AP1.

Launch day: less a major industry media event and more a small-town annual show.

"Australia's Car of Distinction" was launched with full fanfare in February 1957, touted as, "setting the styling trends" with its interpretation of Exner's Forward Look styling philosophy. Chrysler boasted of its full-time power steering and "Safety-Sure" powered brakes, both innovations in the Australian market. Four colour combinations were offered – green, grey, blue and tan, each over "Moonlight" accents, combined into an elegant spear that thrust toward the front end. You'd be forgiven for thinking it was all looking rather good.

Instead, it immediately sank without a trace. People seemed to realise that the Royal wasn't quite the real thing, the car you bought when you couldn't afford a Chevrolet or Customline. The face was overwhelmed by that gargantuan radiator grille, which the single headlights and massive bumper overriders struggled to balance out. The wrap-around rear windscreen failed to distract from the high roof and carryover doors, and the tailfins were just silly, towering above the old, rounded boot lid. The hemispherical hub caps were simply from a bygone era. In short, the styling seemed to highlight the car's 1953 origins, not hide them, attempting to replicate American excess without understanding the substance beneath.

What the '57 Plymouth grille became when applied to the narrower Cranbrook body: a tad overpowering.

Things weren't much better on the engine front. Initially there were two of them to choose from: the existing 230ci side-valver, which gave 86 kW and was paired with a 3-on-the-tree manual (with automatic overdrive); or the bigger 250ci with 87 kW, sourced from Chrysler's Windsor plant in Canada (in both cases, assembly was now handled locally). In either spec, these ageing designs just didn't have the mumbo to compete with GM's more modern overhead-valve sixes, let alone Ford's new Y-block V8. 

Side-valve engines had a time and place, but by the late 1950s that wasn't beneath the bonnet of a prestige car.

Even so, the 250 was worth the extra money, as it came paired with Chrysler's excellent "PowerFlite" 2-speed automatic gearbox. In most markets the PowerFlite had already been superseded by the 3-speed TorqueFlite, but that just meant the tooling was available to send to Australia. Upon its U.S. launch, Chrysler had bragged the PowerFlite had 110 fewer parts and weighed 45kg less than an unnamed rival (almost certainly GM's Hydra-Matic), and would eventually prove tough enough to stand up to anything, including a Hemi V8. Early versions had been operated by a small selector lever on the dash, but since 1956 it had came with quirky push-button controls instead – you simply pressed "D" for drive, "N" for neutral, "R" for reverse, or "L" to lock it in the lower gear, such as when towing or climbing a hill (the parking brake was operated by a separate lever, so there was no button labelled "P"). It was such a simple, reliable system that – the ultimate flattery – the Soviets ripped it off and created their own version for their ZIL limousines!

The more I think about it, the less silly this system seems. Why take up cabin space for controls that merely resemble their manual counterparts?

Good as it was, the PowerFlite wasn't enough to sell the Royal all on its own. You splashed out on an American car because you wanted power, good looks and world-class build quality (believe it or not, "close enough for government work" originally meant higher standards). The latter points were right out out (build quality would remain a bugbear of the local industry until the end), but Chrysler remedied the power problem late in 1957, when their new 313ci "Fury" V8 joined the options list. The Canadians had taken Chrysler's new 318ci "A" engine and under-bored it to 313ci (so they could re-use existing tooling), so it came with a claimed 164 kW at 4,000rpm (plus 440 Nm of torque at 2,800rpm, though on Australian fuel both figures dropped significantly). This finally gave the car enough urge to match its fins: the top speed rose to 152km/h, and 0-100 could be achieved in 17.4 seconds (I've seen 13.5 seconds quoted in some places but that seems optimistic; ditto the "152mph" top speed!). Even so, it was still compromised: the V8 was so big installing it required butter and a shoehorn, and it was an oldschool V8 with heavy castings that exacerbated the Royal's front weight bias, placing extra strain on the feeble front brakes and soft suspension. Fuel consumption largely depended on how it was driven, but with a light foot it could get as good as 15 litres per 100km (compared to 13 or so for the manual six).

It also added a premium to the Royal's asking price, with one road test reporting the car they'd been allocated cost £2,179 ($81,000), including tax and the mandatory PowerFlite gearbox. The engine was ordered on fewer than 500 cars in its first year, but that proved to be a function of how late in the year it arrived; by the end of production, it was powering almost half of all Royals.

So the Chrysler Royal wasn't a great car, but here's the thing: there wasn't much actually wrong with it, either. Its Plymouth/Dodge/DeSoto predecessors had earned their place by being tough, simple and easy to repair, and all those things were still true of the Royal (mostly because it was still the same car underneath). Even if the cabin was a bit bare, the vinyl seats were comfy, the push-button auto was unbreakable, and parking was aided by the huge tailfins, which let you see exactly where the rear corners were. Farmers especially related to its rugged full chassis and uncomplicated design, and its only mechanical drawback – sheer size – was no bad thing in their eyes. The six-cylinder engines might not have been exciting, but they never gave you any trouble either, and most buyers weren't looking for a performance car anyway. That said, the V8 was fearsome for its time: former owners remember the many gutless British trucks running between Sydney and Melbourne in those days, which could add hours – literally – to a road trip if you got stuck behind them crawling up the hills. The brisk acceleration of the V8 had real uses back then.

Outside a handful of loyal private buyers, however, the Royal really only found its niche in government, taxi and hire car fleets. Hire companies particularly appreciated its lack of cutting-edge technology – when you were only running a vehicle for a profit, every penny spent on maintenance was another betrayal, and the Royal seemed to thrive on neglect. Thanks to their full chassis, Royals soon found themselves modified into ambulances, and they were also popular with funeral service directors as the basis for hearse conversions. And of course, the V8 made the Royal immediately popular as a highway patrol car for the South Australian police...

The original AP1 ambulance featured a fibreglass cabin extension developed by Commonwealth Engineering, or Comeng. (Source: Carswp)

Verdict?
So, was the Chrysler Royal a secret masterpiece, only let down by dodgy styling? No, not really. It was big, it was cumbersome, and even the V8 models were a tad gutless (though they frequently made the Royal the one-eyed man in the land of the blind – it was 1957, after all). But did it deserve a more enthusiastic reception than the tumbleweeds it actually got? I think the case could be made. Today, rarity alone makes them collectible, as only 4,748 AP1s were ever built, and even fewer were salted away to preserve them. The same kitschy looks that sank the Royal as a new car are now celebrated as quirky and "period".

But in its primary mission – returning Chrysler Australia to profitability – the Royal can only be judged a failure. Despite their best efforts, Chrysler's sales continued to slide, and the company would post huge financial losses for the next few years. The future looked bleak, but Chrysler Australia was only down, not out: after all they'd already been through, they were never going to give up that easily.

Foreign Customs: The 1955 Ford Customline

So what exactly was a Ford Customline? A chance to dip into the plight of Ford Australia in the 1950s, that's what.

The Fifties: When wearing a seatbelt while driving was optional, but a hat was compulsory. (Source: Old Car Brochures)

The Mighty Fallen
The Holden had come as a wicked shock to Ford Australia. They'd known something like it was in the pipeline – they'd put up a proposal of their own for that bid, after all – but they hadn't expected it to become such a runaway success. With Holdens selling like hotcakes, Ford Australia's plan to gradually increase the local content of their 1942 sedans while keeping the lights on with imported British models was no longer really feasible. And Geelong had to make it work anyway.

In post-war Australia, with money scarce and buyers hesitant to spend money on cars that didn't earn their keep, Ford pared their model line down to their core four-door sedans and workhorse commercials. Australian production had recommenced in 1946 with sedan, utility and panel van models, with minor updates in 1947 and '48. Needing to recoup the money invested into tooling for the '42 model, all sheet metal remained as it had prior to the U.S. entering the war, with only slight changes to the grille and other garnish. Many components were sourced locally, but they were still essentially being built from CKD (Complete Knock-Down) kits dispatched from Canada.

Ad in Australian Motor Manual for the 8hp Anglia (Source: Flickr)

These were the flagship models: otherwise, Ford Australia was largely an importer, treading water with a gaggle of British four-cylinder snuff boxes. The A54A Anglia, for example, was a tiny four-door model offered in sedan, open-top tourer, panel van or utility body styles, fitted with Dagenham's so-called "8hp" engine – the 933cc English Sidevalve four. Its bigger brother was the E03A Prefect – once famously the first Ford designed outside Michigan, but now sorely outdated, sporting only the bigger "10hp" or 1,172cc version of the English Sidevalve. Sales for 1948 totalled 5,552 across all U.S. models and 7,810 across all British models, numbers which made Ford the number-one brand in Australia... for precisely as long as it took Holden to get production underway.

The Car That Saved Ford
The '49 has been called The Car that Saved the Ford Motor Company, and there might be some truth to that. Ford had of course been a major part of FDR's "Arsenal of Democracy", but strict government price controls to stave off the kind of profiteering seen in the First World War had rather limited their opportunities for revenue. A misstep at the moment the U.S. was rotating from war back to peace could've doomed the company, but instead they got it just right.

For their first post-war design, Ford's engineers adopted a drop-centre ladder frame, and the outdated transverse leaf springs were replaced by coils at the front and longitudinal leaves at the rear. The same 226ci "Mileage Maker" straight-six and 239ci "Flathead" V8 carried over, but the exterior styling was all-new. Ford's designers removed the last traces of running boards and brought the door skins out flush with the mud guards, creating the so-called "shoebox" aesthetic. The single-spinner chrome grille was modest compared to what was coming, but a bold statement at the time. Where the '48 Ford was visibly a design from the Thirties, the '49 was a statement of intent for the Fifties. Sales in the U.S. topped a million a year.

The model made its way to Australia, where it was assembled in Geelong as a four-door sedan and – unique to Australia – a two-door utility. By the time of its 1950 facelift, production was achieving 50 percent local content (along with 48 percent for the trucks, and 56 percent for British models), and Ford had plans in the works for the Geelong plant to start manufacturing its own engines, transmissions and axle assemblies with an eye to reaching 93 percent local content across the fleet. The '51 facelift signalled progress by updating to a twin-spinner grille, but its time in the sun lasted just eight months before it was shuffled off to an early retirement.

Customs Immigration
Where Holden had a decidedly suburban buyer base, Ford's customers tended to come from opposite ends of town. The British models mostly ended up with frustrated Holden buyers, people who'd been unable to find a place on Holden's endless waiting list – a useful source of revenue, but not one that could be relied upon as the Bend relentlessly expanded production. American V8 models, on the other hand, tended to attract well-off rural landowners, farmers whose wool and wheat yields had long formed the backbone of the Australian economy. These customers needed a vehicle that could lug a tractor tyre, tow a horse float or round up sheep across a paddock, regardless of whether or not a road existed. Their main concerns were ruggedness and reliability, and – the real key to the project – in a good year, they had the money to pay for it. From their point of view, the old Ford V8s had been ideal – we've already explored how the combination of a full ladder-frame chassis and transverse leaves had been exploited brilliantly by Gelignite Jack Murray.

The problem was, for these buyers the '49 Ford was a bit of a letdown – that fancy new independent front suspension was a lot more fragile than the beam axle it had replaced. To reassure these core buyers and get them back on side, Ford Australia would have to pull off something big, something impressive, something that provided style without compromising on substance. Fortunately, the bosses in Detroit had coughed up just the model for the job: the 1952 Ford Customline.

1952 Customline press shot. A tad matronly, but Australian tastes were still developing at this stage. (Source: Shannons Club)

The stage for the "Cusso" had been set by two decisions. First, and perhaps less importantly, was the 1950 retirement of Hubert French, who finally called time on a quarter of a century as managing director of Ford Australia. The MD's office passed instead to Charlie Smith, who was thus handed the poisoned chalice of shepherding Ford Australia through the dark years of Holden dominance. Secondly – unlike their rivals at Chevrolet – the Ford brass in Detroit decided not to try and get an extra year out of the '49 platform, investing in a clean-sheet design instead.

The resulting 1952 Ford was a rather handsome three-box design, much more up-to-the-minute than its predecessor. With a wheelbase boosted from 114 to 115 inches, the standout styling feature was a new single-piece curved windscreen, a sign of recent advances in glass technology that instantly dated the twin flat screens of previous models. The chrome grille and side-strips were lovely and shiny, but not yet so ostentatious that they started turning people off. It had style to burn, but remained a big, cosy American car with all the interior space you could hope for, with an extra few years of development to sort out the breakables. It was just the ticket.

To go along with their new car, Dearborn decided to revamp their naming conventions. The entry-level Ford was rebranded from Deluxe to Mainline – a simple, honest car aimed at those without a huge amount of money. The mid-range version, hitherto the Custom, became the Customline, a more luxurious option adorned with premium trim and a wider array of colours. At the top of the tree, the most expensive version remained the Crestline, but that never made its way to Australia. The curious thing was, because Australia sat a level below the U.S. in terms of wealth, what had been a blue-collar car for sheet metal workers Stateside became a prestige car for the upper crust in Australia. So although the vehicle that arrived in October 1952 was mechanically a poverty-pack Mainline, its price meant it had to be marketed as a plush, up-market Customline.

This was just the beginning of Geelong's smoke-and-mirrors magic show. Although it arrived as a CKD kit from Canada – the chassis was imported, with the body stamped in Australia – the harsh fact was Ford Australia had to hit a minimum of 80 percent local content to get the government tariffs off its back and make the entire project profitable. The other 20 percent had to be sourced from Canada so it could be paid for within the Commonwealth, but that was a bit of a blessing in disguise. Canada was big enough to support two versions of the same car, and was also, inevitably, much more integrated into the U.S. manufacturing scene. That meant the Mercury brand survived in Canada far longer than it had in Australia, where it benefitted from a curious phenomenon: the many small, isolated farming towns dotting the Great Plains, which usually had only a single car dealership each. If that dealership happened to be Mercury (meant to sit a tier above Ford, remember), then they had to compete at the entry-level as well, or else forfeit those sales to Pontiac. To keep their Mercury dealers in the game, the Customline had been rebadged as the Meteor, a model unique to Canada, and this gave Ford Australia three sources of parts for the local Customline: Ford U.S., Ford of Canada, and Mercury Canada.

A fourth source was the local British components industry, which underpinned the many British cars being assembled in Australia (including Ford's Anglia and Prefect, but also Austin, Morris, Hillman, stuff like that). This provided an extra stream of switches, electrical components, brake boosters, and a thousand other bits and bobs which would never be fitted to an American car in a pink fit, but went into Australian cars as a matter of course. The resulting Geelong-built Customlines hit the road with some odd hybrid configurations which would later prove a minefield for restorers.

Flathead V8s undergoing quality control checks, Geelong c. 1940 (Source: Facebook)

When it came to the engine, however, the Customline was straight down the line. Geelong had been assembling 239ci Flathead V8s since the 1940s, but the company had invested heavily in a modern overhead production line to allow full manufacture for 1952. "Automatic machines do the whole job of assembling the engines," they said proudly, "even to filling them with oil ." With 1,520kg to move, 75 kW was adequate and nothing more, but top speeds of 129km/h and 0-100 times of 19.2 seconds were feasible. A 400m drag strip might take you 21.1 seconds, but if you tried it the theoretical 16.2 litres per 100km fuel economy would disappear in a hurry. If the Customline's performance left it neck-and-neck with the upcoming Holden FJ, that's only because the Holden was half a tonne lighter, and you soon learned where that extra weight had gone when you took it off the bitumen – believe it or not, in these early days it was the Holden that was more likely to break down.

Inside, the interior trim and dash was basically straight out of the U.S. Mainline, with its semi-circular instrument panel that emphasised the unobstructed view though the one-piece windscreen. The steering was very slow, requiring four-and-a-half turns lock-to-lock, but that was normal for the time (and did a wonderful job of insulating the driver from road shock). Pendant pedals replaced the floor-mounted type, and pleated leather seating was standard in a range of colours (including two new two-tone options), with matching Vynex for the door trim. It was a world away from the harsh woollen interiors we were used to, which were notorious for attracting moths and showing stains.

From the brochure: interior of the '52 Customline (Source: Shannons Club)

If the many blank-off plates on the dash gave away how much stuff we were missing, the buyers didn’t mind: it was less to go wrong. In fact, everything about this car seemed tailor-made for the isolated rural driver: all those British components made for excellent parts interchangeability, making the Customline easy to maintain even in the most backwater of communities. Its full chassis made it durable, and it came with a proven engine that burbled along happily even on miserable local fuel. And if the sedan wasn't workhorse enough for you, Ford had recycled the Mainline badge for the utility version, developed just for Australia using the chassis of the U.S. two-door convertible. Parked beside a Mainline, a Holden ute looked like a plucky shire pony next to a Clydesdale, the only downside being how much the Ford driver would have to spend on fodder... er, fuel.

Brochure image of the '52 Mainline ute (Source: Flickr)

Indeed, about the only thing that held it back was the price, which was around the £1,425 mark (equivalent to more than $63,000 in 2024 money). If that compared unfavourably with the basic FJ Standard, at just over £1,000 ($45,000), remember you were getting a lot more car, and that a piddling Austin A70 would set you back £1,370 ($61,000). The Cusso's most direct rival was probably the confusingly-named Chrysler Plymouth, and those cost more like £1,600 ($71,000).

Nevertheless, for those who could afford it, the Cusso was a big hit. No self-respecting auctioneer, country doctor or race horse owner would be caught dead without one, and no less a legend than Slim Dusty was renowned for buying the latest Customline to haul his entourage and caravan from gig to gig beyond the black stump.

Holden Action
The Cusso came along just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of Ford in Australia, by which time the company was Geelong's biggest employer, with over 5,000 workers (54 percent of whom were immigrants). With the car only in production since October, 1953 models were really just '52s with the latest U.S.-model grille. Although a surprisingly minor change, it made the so-called Anniversary model look much lower and sleeker and it had quite an impact, arriving as it did just before the Holden FJ.

Fifty years of Fords in Australia: not to be confused with fifty years of Ford Australia, the company itself only hailing back to 1925. (Source: Shannons Club)

It was in 1954, however, that Ford's real sleight of hand began, as they served up the first of many low-cost facelifts. Although the '54 looked the same as the U.S. model, the local version was in fact nothing more than a '52 model with a '54 grille. Ford's money had instead gone into new stamping presses as part of a massive expansion programme, so they elected to give the U.S. model's new backlit dash a miss, preferring to get an extra year out of their existing right-hand drive dashboard instead. There was no point replacing the '52 dash when it had only been on sale for two years, even though its fake woodgrain dash was beginning to age as tastes changed (though in any case, Holden's dash hadn't changed in six years either).

Similar reasoning led them to get an extra year out of the existing Flathead V8 too, rather than prematurely upgrade to Dearborn's new "Y-block" V8. The Ford Y-block (so-called because the block extended below the crank centreline, giving it a Y-shaped cross-section) was an overhead valve V8 of a much more modern design than the ageing Flathead, providing American customers with 97 kW right out of the gate. In its initial guise it was only a 239 like the Flathead, however, and poor Australian fuel would force the engineering team to lower the compression ratio and negate all the extra power anyway. The Flathead had only been in full local production for two years, so it made no sense to scrap all the tooling and castings to replace it with a unit that wouldn't even be an upgrade. No, better to continue building the Flathead and spend the year sounding out local component suppliers ready for the Y-block's introduction the following year.

Brochure wisely emphasised the big imposing grille, and left the unchanged parts of the car for the back cover. (Source: Old Car Brochures)

All of this made the '54 Customline, quite deliberately, a bit of a placeholder, a moment of breathing space as Ford Australia prepared for their next major offensive. None of it hurt sales however, as 1954 ironically became the peak of Customline sales, with 9,577 of them leaving the showrooms that year (along with 4,509 Mainline utes).

Ol '55
But the '54 was merely a taste of things to come. The 1955 and '56 models are easily the most revered of the local Customlines, arriving in showrooms with new panels, a new dash and new ball joint front suspension, plus a new engine. The reason was simple: it was the only Australian Customline to arrive "in synch" with its American counterpart. 

"Cordially"? (Source: Shannons Club)

The American consumer got new panels only on the '55, but that was because the new dash and engine had been introduced in 1954. Over there, the model tiers now climbed from the entry-level Mainline, to the mid-spec Customline, up to a new prestige model called the Fairlane (replacing the old Crestline badge). The clever (some would say cynical) part was that very little of the expensive hardware under the skin actually changed as the buyer moved up the range: Ford simply added more chrome, a wider array of paint schemes and the latest vinyl trim to upgrade to a Customline or Fairlane (the tail fins on a Mainline, for example, were exactly the same as those on a Fairlane, except they housed only ribbed blank-off plates instead of the new-fangled reversing lights and indicators). In short, the '55 was another victory for Ford's elite accounting department, with a grille that was more stylish but also cheaper to build, and panels that were made less intricate so they required fewer passes through the steel presses. On the other hand, this low-overhead approach allowed the car to be sold at a reduced price, and the move to simple "bolt-on" upgrades suited Ford Australia down to the ground. It set them up for cheap annual facelifts for the remainder of the model's life.

So the sleek, malt-shop looks of the '55 Customline made it a handsome beast, but it all could've been thrown away if the interior had been a disappointment. It was no accident, therefore, that Ford Australia chose this moment to debut their new dashboard. Painted rather than woodgrained, it featured a new and different half-circle speedo that was back-lit to show off the latest technology. It all made the driver's seat of a '55 Customline a very pleasant place to be. 

Not the nicest colour to show it off, maybe, but imagine it in cream or eggshell blue... (Source: Shannons Club)

But the real buzz was all about the new engine. The wisdom of sticking with the Flathead for an extra year was borne out, as Ford Australia had deliberately waited for the Y-block to get an upgrade to 272ci before making the switch. Ford Australia would quote the same 120 kW output for all Customlines from 1955 on, but this was a bit of a white lie as performance would vary considerably over this period. The truth was, local oil companies would soon be forced to lift their octane ratings to comply with an engine upgrade GM-H had in the pipeline. This upgrade would not come into effect until the Holden FE arrived in 1956, which wouldn't be soon enough for 1955 Fords. As a stop-gap, Ford inserted de-compression plates between the heads and block of the Customline to reduce the compression ratio to 6.8:1. This cut power output to around 108 kW, and perhaps a fair bit less – after Wheels was given a test car with its de-compression plates removed for a test in December 1955, they reckoned the truth was closer to 105 kW.

The brochure explaining why it was called the Y-block. (Source: Curbside Classic)

Fit and finish were also notoriously rough, the 6-volt electrics were old-hat, and the vacuum-powered wipers would stop if the driver put their foot down (such as climbing a hill or pulling out to overtake). But at a time when the FJ Holden was also running 6-volt electrics, vacuum wipers, a split windscreen and single centre tail light, the '55 Cusso could be forgiven for its faults. The truth was, nothing on local roads in 1955 looked this good, packed this much grunt and could carry this much stuff without complaint. Government departments quickly noticed its full chassis made for an excellent ambulance or mobile medical clinic, while its V8 power was immediately appreciated by highway patrol officers. Top speed was 154km/h and the 400m could be covered in just over 19 seconds, figures which were quick for 1955. Fuel economy was a claimed 14 litres per 100km average, which was again acceptable for such a big car. Handling was wonderfully neutral, with oversteer or understeer available on demand – Ford was clearly comfortable sending extra forces through that new ball-joint suspension. It remained the simple, reliable brute its customers wanted, and the new mechanicals gave the '55 enough clout to cover a necessary price jump to £1,694 ($73,000 in 2024).

A Long Way From the Top
Good as it was, the '55 heralded the beginning of a sales decline for the Customline. From a peak of 14,000 deliveries the year before, sales slowed to just 11,817 for 1955 (including 3,985 utes, which were now being divided between the Mainline and the F-series pickup). Even with the price hike, that meant an overall drop in Ford's turnover, a bad sign after all that investment in new tooling. The only solution was to keep improving the car and hope they could win those buyers back.

The '56 Cusso: horizontal fog lights made the whole shape seem lower and wider. (Source: Shannons Club)

As a result the 1956 model saw a new "Styletone" colour option, which matched the roof to the lower body with a different colour in between (the normal two-tone option only split the colour above and below the side-strips). This was paired with an interior now available in either leather or Vynex and, late in the year, the standard 3-on-the-tree manual was supplemented by an optional 3-speed "Ford-O-Matic" auto. Often incorrectly remembered as a 2-speed, this was a tough automatic shared across a number of light commercials and Checker taxis in the U.S., and by the time it came to Australia it had been re-engineered to drop back to first gear under hard acceleration (always appreciated by the revheads). Safety was even given brief consideration, with better door locks, optional seat belts and new dished steering wheel.

Under the bonnet, the Y-block ran the same Holley or Stromberg 94 carburettor as the '55, but now the de-compression plates had been removed and the timing and valve lift had been tweaked to match the higher 7.6:1 compression ratio. Combined with a switch to a 12-volt electrical system, which made for a fatter spark, the engine became much sweeter and more responsive, as well as serving up about 123 kW. That was enough to drop the 400m time to 17.5 seconds and push the top speed awfully close to 160km/h, and for the first time in Australia, whispers of "the ton" – a top speed of 100mph – began to creep into the pub-bragging lexicon. But it came at a price, and that price was now £1,705 (nearly $70,000): its main competitors by now were the Chevrolet Six, which undercut it at £1,683 ($68,000), or the Dodge Kingsway Six, which cost a whopping £1,787 ($73,000). Neither came with a V8, but even so sales continued to slide, down to just 6,792 sedans and 3,496 utes for 1956.

Such circumstances weren't the best time to take a big risk, but for 1957 Charlie Smith and the team had no choice. In the U.S., the 1957 Ford Custom 300 and Fairlane 500 models had swelled to a massive 118-inch wheelbase with longer overhangs, lower ride heights and smaller wheels – all features that would kill the car as an off-roader. The new platform also promised huge new tooling costs and reduced local content, meaning adopting it would've amounted to a suicide pact for Ford Australia. They had little choice but to carry on with the '55-'56 shell, updating it annually with tweaks scrounged from the wider Ford empire.

Once more the brochure shows off the car's selling points, which in this edition were all about the looks. Who said style over substance has to be a bad thing? (Source: Old Car Brochures)

Once again, it was Canada that came to the rescue. The '55 Meteor had featured a more elaborate grille with a V and four-pointed star in the centre, which was donated to create an unmistakeable "V" front for the '57 Cusso. Geelong combined this with the '56 Fairlane's huge chrome side-swish, chromed the headlight surrounds as well, and then changed the lettering on the Fairlane's boot badge to read "Customline" instead. Only the carryover 1955 dash spoiled the effect, looking very plain-Jane compared the flashy exterior. The Y-block’s compression ratio had been wound back to 7.1:1, but a new Holley 320cfm carb was fitted which, along with a new distributor and head tweaks, delivered 122 kW. The engine would remain in this spec until production ended.

One factor Ford did not neglect in their promo material was the combination of power steering, powered brakes and the Ford-O-Matic gearbox. The times being what they were, these were marketed heavily to the fairer sex, who would surely faint like a Dickens heroine if subjected to the strain of shifting their own gears. Regardless of who it was for, the V8 and the auto were both features Holden wouldn't be able to match for many years to come, which was a useful extra feather in Ford's cap.

The 1958 edition was the most extraverted Customline yet. This time Ford pinched the entire grille off the 1955 Meteor, complete with the four-pointed star that earned the '58 its enduring nickname, the "Star Model". The elaborate side-flash came from the two-door '56 Meteor Rideau, because it could pass for an evolution of the previous model's '56 Fairlane trim. The star theme carried around to the new boot badge (also lifted from the '56 Meteor), and the extruded stars laid into the vinyl door trims. All that was missing was the spectacular 1956 Meteor grille, but that perhaps would've been a bridge too far for the conservative Australian market.

Ford-O-Matic Star Model: As you can see, there were some striking colour combinations to be had if your pockets were deep enough. (Source: Unique Cars)

The '58 was badged as either a manual Customline or a Ford-O-Matic auto, with no trace of Customline badging on the latter. Each came with very different trim and stitch patterns. The Ford-O-Matic featured an extra space between the chrome flashes, meaning if you ticked the Styletone option it could be had with three paint colours, to standout effect even in 1958 (by contrast, the manual Customline could be ordered in a single tone or two-colour Styletone only). In addition, the 1958 dash is often incorrectly listed as a '56 American or Canadian item, but in fact was a unique item produced by Ford Australia. The speedo and gauges were local items made by Smiths Instruments, packaged differently and featuring an optional centre-dash clock. A special slide-control panel on the dash operated the fan-boosted heater option (also supplied by Smiths), while power steering and powered brakes continued to pad out a lengthy options list. The price of the Customline had risen again, going to £1,899 ($74,000) for the manual and £2,063 (over $80,000) for the Ford-O-Matic.

And if all that wasn't enough, there are rumours that Cussos after 1955 could be ordered with a bigger 292ci V8 fully-imported from the U.S., if you didn't mind the cost and were in a position to ignore local content requirements (say, if you were a government department in need of some VIP transport capable of making a sharp getaway). There doesn't seem to be proof, but there are enough paperwork irregularities in Ford's records from this period that it seems plausible.

And Yet...
Although one of the best cars money could buy in its day, Ford sold just 4,903 of them, even including Mainlines and a handfull of spillover '59 models. How was such a thing possible? Well, at first I assumed much of it would come down to Holden's production capacity steadily catching up with demand. September 1956 saw the opening of Holden's new Dandenong plant after all, which massively expanded Holden's production capability. Sure that would make a dent? To find out I fed Unique Cars and Parts' production numbers into an OpenOffice spreadsheet to generate the low-effort graph below, expecting to see a sudden dip in from 1956 to '57 as Dandenong opened. And indeed, there was a significant dip... but for the British models. While frustrated Holden buyers did indeed abandon Ford once there were enough Holdens to go around, sales of Customlines barely even flinched. 

If you're good at maths and wondering why U.S. plus U.K. Models doesn't equal Total sales, it's because the total includes trucks and Fordson tractors as well.

So what could explain that long, slow decline? Well, the simple fact that Cusso buyers were rural landowners. Joe Kenwright's article over on Shannons Club signs off with recollections of an interview with Sir Brian Inglis, a president of Ford Australia who in the Customline days was a manager on the Geelong line. He told of how Customline sales each year were heavily dependent on the annual wool and wheat harvest, and the British capacity to buy them. Those well-off customers were actually only well-off only some of the time, so there was no way to project future sales numbers to justify new tooling. Ford was forced to break automated manufacturing tasks up into smaller manual tasks instead. As sales varied, they could hire or fire more staff as needed: this meant, believe it or not, most panels in those days had to be cut out with band saws! Inglis recalled with some horror the potential for injuries caused by shattering blades, but at the time there was no other way to do it. Similarly, those big, sexy chrome bumpers that in the U.S. arrived as a single unit? In Australia they were assembled from three smaller pieces, with joins hidden by the overriders. 

The point is, by the late 1950s that variable workforce was shrinking fast as drought began to bite. Although the worst of it wouldn't affect the eastern states until the mid-1960s, the decade from 1957 to 1968 was a dry one, and even in the early days the lack of rain was enough to veto luxury purchases like new cars – especially when component interchangeability meant parts salvaged from one Customline could be used to keep the next running. Ford was only saved by a sales resnaissance for their British models: that widening band of orange as the graph hits 1958 and '59 was mostly driven by the new Mk.II Zephyr, the first Zephyr able to justify its extra cost well enough to start peeling buyers away from Holden. The path forward was clear – Ford needed to join Holden in the mid-size car market, where the highs were less high but the lows were less likely to put the whole company in jeopardy. No wonder the Zephyr was the model chosen to base the company's future upon.

Still of the Geelong plant in 1957: a Mk.II Consul leads what looks like an F-350 down the line, with a Mainline ute standing by to the left.

The last Customline left the Geelong plant in September 1959, by which time it was firmly out of date. Its erstwhile replacement was the 1959 "Tank" Fairlane, a car so wrong for Australia it's almost comical (especially when it cost £2,173, or north of $83,000!). But in many ways the Cusso was never replaced. Throughout this period GM-H offered the Chevrolet Six as an up-market alternative to the Holden, and although equally stylish, their basic six-cylinder engines and relatively drab presentation failed to inspire the same awe as the Customline. Only in another century, when Range Rover became a prestige brand, would we again see horse floats under tow by a vehicle that was equal parts workhorse and éclat.

Charlie Smith had realised long before that most Ford products weren't strong enough to be sold in Australia. He worked to convince his Canadian managers that local manufacturing was the solution, but it wasn't until 1954 that he succeeded. That meant it wasn't until 1956 that Ford Australia bought 162 hectares of Wurundjeri land on the northern outskirts of Melbourne, in a suburb named for the pleasant open countryside which had long supported pastoralists – Broadmeadows. They handed the Victorian government £90 million (more than $3.6 billion today) for rail, water and sewage connections, and the construction work began. Ford Australia was on a mission to unseat Holden, or die trying.

1956: Albert Park Extravaganza

As a complement to the Olympics Games, Melbourne put on a motorsport extravaganza the likes this country had never seen before. The format had been established eighteen months earlier, when Melbourne had dreamed up the inaugural Moomba Festival. The format they'd come up with was a pair of race meetings on consecutive weekends, both held on the roads around Albert Park – one headlined by open-wheel Grand Prix cars, the other by Le Mans-style sports cars. With the Olympics in town and the whole world watching, the organisers had to pull out something special if they wanted to impress, and so they did – landing the biggest race in the country, the Australian Grand Prix.

Prince Albert Ring
In the modern age, Albert Park is effectively a permanent circuit, just with the slight quirk of not actually being permanent. In 1956 it was somewhat different. First and most obviously, racing was done in an anti-clockwise direction, the opposite of how it is today. Secondly – as was the style at the time – it was also much more dangerous. The road was narrow, and many of its sweeping, high-speed sections were lined with trees and bordered by concrete gutters, fences and the ever-present hay-bales, with nary a safety barrier to be found. Wiping yourself out on a tree was one option, but another was drowning, as the circuit followed the outline of the lake a bit more closely than today, and there were no barriers to keep you from landing in the drink. Conceivably, someone could've rolled into the lake and been pinned under their car, which really doesn't bear thinking about. But this was the 1950s: birthrates were high, life was cheap, and no-one was forcing you to go racing.

That said, although the actual tarmac has been dug up and relaid any number of times since then, a small part of the original layout is still there: the old start/finish line is still wedged between the modern pit building and the lake. If you're ever in Melbourne and have some time to kill, consider walking or driving around the lake, and having a think about how things used to be.

The Argus Cup
The Grand Prix wouldn't take place until the second weekend, however, so the first batch of formula cars to hit the track were really only there to warm up the crowd. The date was Sunday, 25 November (the same day Betty Cuthbert won gold in the 100m sprint), and the time was 1:30pm. The event was the Argus Cup, a 16-lap handicap for Formula Libre cars.

Handicap races were pretty common in those days. It meant, basically, that the race was run like the "Ultimate Speed Challenge" crowd-pleasers they've staged in more modern days. You know the ones, where they first release a really fast road car to do a single lap, then a little bit later a V8 Supercar, then (a long time later) a Formula 1 car, and they all cross the finish line together? It was basically that, but as an actual race, and it was a good way to get an exciting finish out of a group of wildly disparate cars. It was the sort of thing you could get away with when it was all just a bit of fun anyway, which is what it seems to've been – certainly there weren't any "name" drivers in this one.

The race was won by Neil Charge in an MG Special, with 2nd place going to Otto Stone (an engineer later known for his work maintaining Stan Jones' Maserati 250F) in an MG K3. 3rd place went to a Mr C. Martyr in a Sunbeam, which was probably quite a feat of driving (or some masterful sandbagging...) given he'd started with the biggest handicap – the "7.44" next to his name can only mean a handicap of 7 minutes and 44 seconds. Sadly, the race was also marred by a nasty shunt for Phil "Puss" Catlin, who crashed near the army barracks at Melford Corner and suffered what ultimately proved to be fatal injuries.

Via Facebook.

K.L.G. Touring Car Trophy
The 2:30pm slot was allocated to Event 2, a brief 8-lap sedan race listed as the K.L.G. Touring Car Trophy, our main business for today. "K.L.G." appears to've been a spark plug manufacturer, so it's appropriate that here they sparked an explosive new career in Aussie racing.

Like all touring car races in those days, the K.L.G. Trophy was a class race divided into three classes based on engine capacity. The 1,500cc tier included such names as Bob Holden in a Peugeot 203 (he was in touch with the factory in France, who'd sent him a workshop manual in late 1955 to assist him in blueprinting the car – then asked him to keep it under his hat, lest they be inundated with requests for more such manuals...) and Sydney journalist David McKay, destined to become the inaugural Australian Touring Car Champion. McKay was racing on behalf of the York Motors dealership, and his mount today (he tended to change them frequently) was a Simca Aronde. Dr John Wright summed it up on Shannons Club:

Simca's first unique car was the 1951 Aronde, codenamed Simca 9. It was also the first Simca to feature monocoque construction. Aronde was the French word for swallow and the early cars wore a highly stylised bird emblem. The new model was intended to be a direct rival for the Peugeot 203. … The 9 got a facelift in 1955 [known] as the 90A and this version was produced for three years. The 90A had a 1,290cc "Flash" engine. The sporty Montlhéry version [was] named for the banked oval outside Paris, where in 1952 and 1953 Arondes had set numerous endurance records, including 100,000km (39,242 laps) at an average speed of 104km/h.

The 3,000cc class featured Bib Stillwell and Bill Patterson (both to become superstar dealers in the decades ahead), as well as Frank Coad, who in a few years' time was due to win the first-ever Armstrong 500. Then as now he was mounted in a Vauxhall, which made sense given he and his brother George ran a Vauxhall dealership in the northern Victorian town of Kerang. It was named G.W. Coad & Sons in honour of their father, George Sr: Frank's entrant, "G.I. Coad", was doubtless George Jr.

All eyes however were on the top, or "Open" class, where the frontrunners almost all driving Fords. There was a Mr H. Smith entered on behalf of Smith Radio Pty Ltd – presumably his own business – and the triple Australian Grand Prix winner, Doug Whiteford. Although his main concern would be contesting the Grand Prix in his Lago-Talbot (or "Large Tablet", as the locals liked to call it), his dealership was just a stone's throw away in Carlisle Street, St Kilda, so it's not like pulling double duty was going to be a huge logistical strain. The only man not in a Ford was a Mr F.J. Hann, who'd brought a Jag – whether an XK120 or a Mk.I, I can't say, though it seems he also raced at an early Warwick Farm meeting in 1960.

The two to watch, however, were right up at the front. Muffler magnate Len Lukey was at the wheel of his Ford Customline, a V8-powered machine which had received a careful going-over from Harry Firth. To keep his hand off the trophy today was going to take a very special car, or an even more special driver... which was the cue for one Norman Edward Beechey to enter the picture, stage right.

Starting lineup: Beechey on the left, Lukey in the centre, and on the right the Holden of Doug Leonard. Only two things seem to be known about Leonard: That he won his class at the Hepburn Springs Hill Climb in April, probably in this very car; and that he didn't have the best weekend at Albert Park. During practice he apparently turned some laps in his furniture removal van, and his best lap in the race was a dismal 5:33.6 against Lukey's 2:25.2 –both facts hinting at car trouble.

Stormin' Norman
Who was Norm Beechey, you might be asking? Simply, he was the boyhood hero of both Dick Johnson and Peter Brock – take a moment to let that sink in. He was hero to quite a number of impressionable young boys, I imagine, and no wonder. His hot-blooded driving style – armfuls of opposite lock, throttle wide open, a lick of black smoke curling off the tortured rear tyres, all conducted one-handed as the other was busy bracing against the roof to hold himself upright on the slippery bench seat – all that couldn't help but win hearts. Some drivers leave the crowds unmoved and let the stopwatches do the cheering; by his own admission, Norm Beechey was firmly in the opposite camp.

At this time, however, he was just a 24-year-old kid from Brunswick, Melbourne. Norm had been forced to grow up ahead of schedule when his father, Dick, developed a gambling addiction and lost too much of his meagre payslip on the horses. The family separated, and Norm – youngest of three siblings – became the main breadwinner for his mother Ethel. During the war years, the not-yet-teenaged Norm had learned to scrounge timber and scrap iron to construct dog trailers to sell along Sydney Road. He became so good at this that, at the tender age of 13, he saved enough to buy his first car, a 1912 twin-cylinder Swift for which he paid £12 10s. After a bit of work, he was able to sell it again for £35 – turning $1,145, in 2024 money, into $3,125 – enough to set himself up as a backyard dealer. Whether they were cars or trucks, Beechey would drive his wares to school at Brunswick Technical via the back streets (and the fact that he didn't yet have a licence worried nobody).

It wasn't difficult. It was a lot of fun. I always had a lovely car myself. I'd drive it to a country dealer [of which he had a small but willing network], leave my car and drive back to Melbourne in the one I knew had the best chance of a quick resale. Then I'd head back up with another couple of drivers [including elder sister Minnie] pay up with the money I'd just earned, bring back the rest and retrieve my own car. – Norm Beechey, AMC #100

If these vehicles needed mechanical work before being flipped, there was another young bloke in Brunswick able to do the work. He'd get it done quickly, and not charge you an arm and leg either. He'd moved to Brunswick when his mother bought a local milk bar after her own marriage broke down. His name was Bob Jane.

The two were not only kindred spirits and good mates, they were a pair of utter lunatics who'd scare the living daylights out of any bright young things foolish enough to ride along with them. On Friday nights they would race each other down the tram tracks, the finish line being The Age newspaper offices where they needed to place their classified ads for the Saturday paper. "There were no speed limits in those days," recalled Norm. "The best they could charge you with was 'drive in a manner dangerous', if they caught you. Most of the police were on pushbikes or war surplus Harley Davidsons... not fast."

Certainly not as fast as a big American V8... (Source: Shannons Club)

Beechey was lucky to even get a start in the K.L.G. Touring Car race, as he didn't rock up until entries had closed. That he got one was courtesy of Basil Rice, who'd been planning to run a Ford that Mark Oastler only described as a "twin-spinner" – probably a 1951 Ford Custom V8, which today are rare and prized as they were only built locally for 8 months. When Beechey took Rice for a demonstration lap in his Customline, however, Rice realised he was only going to embarrass himself, and generously offered his entry to Beechey. Although it created confusion – the race reports and official programmes still list "B. Rice" as the driver of the #4 Ford – it was Beechey at the wheel. He was about to make his debut on the big stage.

Beechey shouldn't have had a chance against Lukey's Customline. He was running standard 15-inch wheels and Olympic tubeless tyres, with no special brake linings or finned drums (though the man himself admits that in those days, "braking markers" were a detail he had yet to master). He even had an ordinary factory camshaft fitted, though he and a mate had had put together a custom inlet manifold with dual carburettors and a dual exhaust system, which worked surprisingly well.

Lukey having a tough time staying ahead of Beechey in Jaguar Corner (Source: Shannons Club)

Although a provisional driver without a full licence, Beechey stunned everyone at the Park that day when he beat Lukey fair and square. The contest was ferocious, with Beechey coming within a whisker of getting black-flagged when he ran wide and collected a hay bale, rejoining with it still jammed underneath his car. As he thundered around the lake, strands of hay flew up into the air like rooster-tails behind him, but the officials kept the black flag furled – purely because, as he admitted later, the show was too good to spoil! Beechey hung onto the back of Lukey for 7 of the 8 laps, and then, in the very last corner, he forced the experienced elder statesman into a mistake. Lukey ingloriously spun his Customline at Jaguar Corner and, unable to believe his luck, Beechey stormed past to greet the chequered flag.

Eight laps were all it had taken to make Norm Beechey a household name. He remained with the Customline for a few more races, but in 1959 he would switch over to a black Holden FJ, which he would campaign for the next five years. It would become one of the fastest humpies in the country and cement Beechey's status as a Holden hero – somewhat ironically, when it had all started in a Ford...

Bryson Industries Cup
The rest of the weekend – both weekends, actually – is more Primotipo's wheelhouse than mine. You can check out his notes here, here and here, and I recommend you do so, if just for all the gorgeous photographs he's assembled. That said, let me give you a brief summary.

Event 3 on the schedule, starting at 3:00pm, was the Bryson Industries Cup, an 8-lap race for open-wheel Grand Prix cars. Bryson Industries was a local Jaguar distributor, initially formed when Jack Bryson took a partner, named Lawson, to form Brylaw Motors. Bryson soon bought Lawson out and renamed the concern Bryson Industries, making his pile importing Jags into Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia (Queensland and the Territory remained Westco Motors turf).

Unlike the earlier handicap race, this one was full of big-name drivers, giving their Grand Prix cars a quick run in support of the sports car race later in the day. According to the Autosport forums, it was won by Peter Whitehead in a Ferrari 555 Super Squalo, beating Reg Hunt's Maserati 250F and Kevin Neal's mongrel Maserati (an A6GCM with a 250F engine). Behind trailed Reg Parnell and Lex Davison in Ferraris, then the Lago-Talbots of Doug Whiteford and Owen Bailey. The only other finisher was Reg Smith, driving a Cooper-Bristol that had once been helmed by Jack Brabham. You can find the full results here.

I Australian Tourist Trophy
Event 4, the headline act of the first weekend, a 32-lap race for Le Mans sports cars, kicking off at 3:30pm. The grid for this one was stacked with classic cars and classic drivers alike: Our old friend Bill Pitt was there, slated to drive Mrs Anderson's Jaguar D-Type (one of the most renowned cars in the country), with a similar machine in the hands of Bib Stillwell. Fresh off his victory in the support race, Peter Whitehead probably gave his face a quick wash and then pulled his helmet and gloves back on before climbing into another Ferrari, this one a 750A. David McKay rolled up in an Aston Martin DB3S, while Lex Davison fronted in his own H.W.M. Jaguar. Even at the distant end of the grid the names kept on coming, with Doug Whiteford entering an Austin Healey 100S, Frank Coad a "Vauxhall Special", and Doug Chivas a Lotus-Climax. There was even a "G.P. Manton" in a Porsche entered by Monaro Motors, with the "G.P." standing for "Gerald Peter" – yep, Skinny Manton was here too. Perhaps the most idiosyncratic machine on the grid was Paul England's Ausca, built by England in his spare time working at Repco, and powered by a Holden Grey engine featuring one of the first Repco Hi-Power cylinder heads – more on that item another day.

But by far the biggest news was the works Maserati team from Europe, who'd gone to the trouble (and expense!) of shipping five whole cars out to Australia. Three of them were 250Fs built for the 2.5-litre Formula 1, the quintessential 1950s Grand Prix car, and one of the sweetheart drives of all time. The other two were Le Mans-oriented 300S sports cars, fresh from contesting (but – alas! – not winning) the World Sports Car Championship. Despite victories in 1,000km races at Buenos Aires and the Nürburgring, the car had ultimately disappointed, losing the title to their arch-rivals at Ferrari. Always cash-strapped, the Maserati brothers decided they could afford to make the trip to Australia only by making sure it was one-way – the cars would not be returning to Europe, but were to be sold off instead. An exciting prospect, if you had your bank manager's number handy...

Leading the expedition were two of Maserati's stable of drivers: the Frenchman, Jean Behra; and British boy-racer, Stirling Moss. On the off chance you haven't heard of Stirling, here's the short version: In 1955, he'd got the call-up to join the all-conquering Mercedes team as number two to the Grand Old Master, Juan Manuel Fangio. "The best classroom of all time was the spot about two car-lengths behind Fangio," Stirling said of those days: "I learned more there than anywhere else." One observer commented: "So closely did he track Fangio that from some angles, the Stuttgart team appeared to have entered an eight-wheeler." This nose-to-tail running had given team boss Alfred Neubauer conniptions – what if, he demanded, Fangio made a mistake and took them both off the track? Unconcerned, Moss had replied, "Juan Manuel simply did not make mistakes." Not even Fangio temporarily thieving Moss' girlfriend Sally Weston seemed to raise a complaint: "Rather him, I suppose, than anyone else..."

But after the Le Mans disaster of 1955 forced Mercedes to pull out of racing, both star drivers had become free agents for 1956, releasing Fangio to go to Ferrari and Moss, inevitably, to Maserati. And with Mercedes team orders out of the way, the duels between them became real. After a bruising back-and-forth arm wrestle, Fangio had emerged with the 1956 world title (his fourth), but Moss had made him work for it, taking brilliant wins at Monaco and Monza.

So when he arrived in Melbourne, Stirling was match-fit and approaching the peak of his considerable powers. He wasn't to know he was walking into the home turf of the man who would become his greatest rival, but Jack Brabham had barely two European seasons under his belt and was only now making the crucial move to the father-and-son team of Charlie and John Cooper. For most of 1956 he'd been just another Maserati customer, and indeed there'd been some talk of providing Brabham with their third 250F for the upcoming Grand Prix, but the deal had fallen through. It's not hard to guess why, because it's probably not a coincidence that when Brabham hit the track that November afternoon, it was in a Cooper-Climax T39 "Bobtail".

In practice, Moss set a new lap record of 1:55.8, which The Argus noted incredulously was, "Set in a sportscar, the record previously held by a racing car [i.e. an open-wheeler]," and calling it, "One of the finest exhibitions of race driving seen in Melbourne." Nevertheless, it was teammate Behra who put his Maserati on pole, and at the end of the 32-lap, 100-mile race he was the only one on the same lap as Stirling. Moss took the inaugural Australian Tourist Trophy by 20 seconds over his French teammate.

As promised, both Maseratis were then sold off, with one of them snapped up by Doug Whiteford (who after three Australian GPs needed a fresh challenge), and the other by Reg Smith. Reg would only hang onto it briefly before moving it on to a younger and much more ambitious owner, Bob Jane.

The Argus Trophy
Seven days later, on Sunday 2 December, Event 5 opened the second weekend of racing. This was another race sponsored by The Argus, an 8-lap sprint for sports cars. The weekend was basically a mirror image of the previous one, with a sports car appetiser before the Grand Prix cars hit the track for the main course. In the absence of the Maseratis (which their new owners sensibly wanted to keep uncreased), it was won by our own Jack Brabham, a herculean feat of driving given the long straights of the Park and the piddling 1.5-litre Climax FWB engine behind him. His job was admittedly made easier when Bill Pitt – first Aussie home in the TT the week before – clipped a kerb on the opening lap and rolled his D-Type, landing bruised (but otherwise unharmed) among the hay bales. Bib Stillwell brought the other D-Type home in 2nd, while Bill Patterson in another Cooper Bobtail rounded out the podium.

XXI Australian Grand Prix
At last we came to the big one, the race everyone had been waiting for: the 80-lap, 250-mile Australian Grand Prix, starting at 2:00pm. 

Again, an idiosyncratic entry was a certain J. Myers in a "W.M./Cooper". This was of course Jack Myers in his refurbished Cooper T20 (late of Bernie Ecclestone, among others), fitted with a special variant of the Holden Grey engine. Instead of the standard iron pushrod head, this one came fitted with a special DOHC aluminium head crafted by Merv Waggott, hence the "W.M." in the car's designation, referring to Waggott and Myers. This won't be the last mention of the Waggott Grey on this blog, but that said... Myers would be lapped fourteen times over before the chequered flag flew.

Because – there's no other way to say it – Moss was magnificent this day. In a singular display of speed and car control, he cruised to the victory a crushing 1 minute and 48 seconds ahead of the next-fastest driver – which was his own teammate, Jean Behra. No-one else was even on the same lap. The fact that Moss came within a few seconds of lapping even Behra must've been a humbling experience for the rest of the grid, with extra salt rubbed in when he beat his own lap record in 1:52.2 – an average speed just above 100mph. Peter Whitehead was the sole non-Maserati driver in the top five, taking the bronze, with Reg Hunt (the first Aussie home) and Stan Jones 4th and 5th respectively, in 250Fs. Doug Whiteford's Lago-Talbot was the first non-Italian car home, and that was 8 laps down in 8th place.

As you might imagine, the partisan London press were delighted with the result. No-one in their right mind would've then predicted that Stirling Moss would never win a World Championship, while his arch-rival from Australia would eventually win three...

Legacy
Some newspapers hailed the weekends as, "when Australian motor racing came of age." I wouldn't quite go that far – it would be decades yet before the best in the world would descend on Australia, throw all their considerable resources at winning and still be sent home with their tail between their legs – but it was a landmark meeting all the same. By some accounts the crowd was 150,000 strong, which if true would've amounted to a tithe of Melbourne’s 1.5-million native population (though inflated by god-knows-how-many with the Olympics in town). The international attention was warmly received, as those who'd come across the seas were treated to an event that really wasn't behind what you'd find in Britain or the Continent. And in all the years to come, there would only be one more occasion when the Australian Grand Prix, the Australian Tourist Trophy and – yes, let's say it – the most significant touring car race of the year would all take place in the same meeting. And that wasn't too far in the future, either.