1953: The Holden FJ

On the farm, on the street, in the garages of suburbia and red dust of the outback, a myriad of brands found themselves swept aside by the coming of the Holden. The factories at Woodville and Fishermans Bend couldn't build them fast enough, and Holden salesmen bragged they had the easiest job in the world. It seemed the company could do no wrong, so when the time came to retool for a new model... well, how iconic do you like your cars?

Kangaroo Kaizan
The 48-215 didn't stand still in its five years on sale. Even when they were selling every car they made, running updates were the order of the day at GM-H, as even after exhaustive testing in both Michigan and Australia, the Holden suffered niggling durability problems. Most serious of these was the tendency of the rear leaves to crack on early models, leading to a suspension upgrade in March 1953 that introduced telescopic shock absorbers and wider leaf springs for extra strength.

Four months later, Holden greased their fleet credentials with the aptly-named Business model, aimed squarely at the fleet buyers. Officially it was known as the 48-217 (or even the 48-215-217, which is the sort of thing better read by an IBM than frail human eyes), and while it's not clear to me exactly which extras it offered, the parts catalogue mentions mudflaps front-and-rear, Venetian blinds and cigarette lighters. Presumably, this reflects certain options only making financial sense if they were ordered from the suppliers in bulk, and then fitted on the line in batches (though if you absolutely had to have it and your chequebook didn't flinch, your local dealer was always at your disposal). That said, the Business was only produced at Woodville, which suggests the body itself took a little something extra to produce.

Holden bodies on the line at Woodville, 1949. (Source: Primotipo)

But there was no denying the Holden was a pretty bare-bones package. If you were being kind you might've called it minimalist: If you were less generous, you might say it was the next thing up from a Willys Jeep. What the customers would need in a follow-up model were more creature comforts, so that's exactly what Holden gave them.

Frugal Genius
The Holden FJ was a landmark in several important ways. For one, it kicked off Holden's "secret" two-letter naming code, where the letters stood for the number of its year of release, but in reverse order. By this system, "F-J" stood for "5-2" – model year 1952 – so it's just as well the system was so obfuscating. It helped hide that when it arrived in October 1953, the FJ was almost a year behind schedule.

The FJ also began the proud industry tradition of touching up a car halfway through its lifespan and calling it a new model, but there would be few facelifts as successful as this one. On paper, jazzing up a fundamentally-1930s shape with a jukebox grille, silly chrome fins and shiny new hub caps shouldn't be a recipe for success. And yet... when Peter Brian needed a stage name to match the fifties-nostalgia image of his band Ol' 55¹, what did he land on? Frankie J. Holden. And when GM-H decided to create a concept car as a gift to themselves for their fiftieth birthday, what did they call it? The Efijy. For cultural valence the FJ is unmatched, and no wonder: After the rather serious 48-215, the feelgood FJ was light-hearted and cheerful, a sign the hard times were finally over.

No-one with vines on their house ever bought a Holden, of course, but in advertising vibes always beat veracity.

It's true that dazzling new radiator grille hogged all the attention, but the FJ was more than just a pretty face. When it launched at the Fishermans Bend Social Hall in October 1953, it was available in four basic variants: the Standard sedan, with a list price of £870 ($37,000 in 2023; with on-roads, it was more like £1,023, or seventeen months' wages at the time); the Business sedan (£895, or $38,000); and the tarted-up Special, which offered the first glimpses of comfort in a locally-made car. If you could stand the £915 asking price ($39,000), the Special got you front door armrests, rear passenger assist straps, window winders and a cigarette lighter, and an interior light turned on when you opened the door. The big news however was the "Elasco-Fabulous" vinyl seats with two-tone colour schemes – it was the mid 20th Century, so it was completely unacceptable to encounter any kind of natural fibre (although it must be said early FJ Specials carried over the previous model's tough leather). There were also new exterior colours like Lithgow Cream, Mortlake Blue and Trentham Green.

The FJ interior was to the 48-215 as the Labor Party is to the Coalition: Same thing, but a nicer tone.

The fourth variant was the ute (£875, or $37,000), while the fifth came along in December 1953 – the all-new panel van, which debuted with the FJ range. Retailing for £890 ($38,000) plus tax, it was visibly just a utility with a roof welded on, but that roof enclosed 2.3 cubic metres of cargo volume, rated for 336kg (a little behind the ute's 375kg, but sometimes you have to keep stuff dry). Like the Business, the panel van was only produced at Woodville – all other models could be built at any plant with a body shop, which in 1953 finally included Pagewood (the Sydney plant at last ceasing the manufacture of Frigidaires and rejoining the motor industry).

Holden didn't invent the panel van, but they would certainly make it their own in the years ahead. (Source: Classic Car Catalogue)

There were no other mechanical upgrades over the 48-215, but in truth none were needed at this stage. The FJ added attractive Buddy Holly styling and new levels of kit without losing the 48-215's strengths – comfort, ruggedness, sprightly performance, fuel economy and unbelievable value for money. It also became the first Aussie car to be exported, with an initial batch of 30 sent to New Zealand, soon followed by a further 321 – not huge numbers by any measure, but a moment of pride for a country long used to importing. And on the second-hand market the FJ became a common and beloved first car for the larval Baby Boomer generation. No wonder it became such an icon, with 169,969 of them leaving the showrooms in its three years on the market – much to the chagrin of Holden's rivals, whose sales were rapidly heading in the opposite direction.

Spanners Out
The sudden availability of the car in Australia triggered a matching rise in motor racing. There had been racing here before Holden, of course – the first Australian Grand Prix had been held at Phillip Island in 1928 – but hitherto it had mainly been restricted to open-wheelers and sports cars, which required serious money to buy and run. There was such a thing as sedan racing, known as "touring car" racing (to contrast with "racing cars", you see), but they were regarded as a support category, where the Grand Prix drivers would often compete in the vehicles they used to tow their racing cars. With newspaper classifieds and wrecker's yards rapidly filling up with old Holdens, however, motor racing became a practicable hobby for the emerging middle class. One driver who spent his childhood in this era later described it thus:

Racing was a very social event back then and all you needed to enter any race was a Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS) licence, a car and a pair of balls. It was more like going to play a game of golf than going to an event like a V8 Supercars race today.

There were three main categories in Australia; Open Wheelers, Sports Cars and Touring Cars. The Open Wheelers were probably the big deal, followed by the Sports Cars and then the Touring Cars. Open Wheelers and Sports Cars were fast and expensive. You had to have specialised cars, and big-name international drivers like David Myles, Graham Hill and Pedro Rodriguez would come over to race, which added to the glitz and glamour of those categories.

In the Touring Cars category, you could race just about anything, even an old FJ, so this was the one for me. There were three main levels in this category: local, state and national. We would have ten local meetings a year between Lowood and Lakeside. They were very informal and fought out between a bunch of mates. The state races were less frequent and a little more prestigious. Every couple of years there’d be a race at the national level, such as the Australian Grand Prix. Even at these big national events, the only entry requirement was a CAMS licence. You weren’t ranked and you didn’t need to have a certain number of wins – just three stripes ripped off on the back of a card to show that you’d done three races. If there weren’t enough entries in one particular race, they would mix up the categories and often put open and closed sports cars in with the touring cars to make up the field. – Dick Johnson, Dick Johnson: The Autobiography

A Holden was the ideal tool for this job. Whether a 48-215 or an FJ, a Holden gave you a light, stiff body that didn't cost an arm and leg, with spare parts available practically everywhere, and fitted with one of the most upgradeable engines ever made – the 132ci Grey six. Holden had deliberately left a lot on the table with the Grey, which in its factory spec was held back by conservative spark timing and a very low compression ratio. With a little knowledge (and some care about your fuel), you could find some gains just via more aggressive distributor settings, without even thinking about splashing out on new parts. Bump up the compression, start hunting for a hotter cam and swap the standard carburettor for something aftermarket (Amal motorcycle carbs were the hot ticket to those in the know), and you were well on your way to becoming a racer. It wasn’t long before there was a thriving industry for hot Holdens, providing tuning tips and parts to those with a need for speed.

Jumpin' Jack
This was the "outlaw era" of touring car racing, when the races were staged by a multitude of promoters in different states, each with their own set of rules (which were only enforced when the scrutineers were in the mood anyway). The king of this era was one Jack Myers, and although it's touch and go whether you've even heard of him, he was the original Holden Hero, the first of a line that would run through Beechey, Brock, Lowndes and Skaife before terminating with Shane van Gisbergen's epic victory lap at Bathurst in 2020.

Myers at Mount Druitt, Sydney, sometime in the early 1950s (Source: Primotipo)

Based in the Sydney suburb of Kingsford, Myers was a mechanic and parts retailer by day, but a backyard engineer and racer on weekends. He spent the early 1950s in a yellow Holden 48-215 he described as "fairly stock", yet would do 110mph (177km/h) on a long enough straight! Even better, for a mere £130 ($5,400 in 2023), Myers was offering to turn your car into a 100mph Holden too. His modifications involved boring out your block to 3³/¹⁶ inches, fitting new pistons and rings, a shaved head, new cam grind, twelve inner valve-springs, an additional Stromberg carb, custom Myers inlet manifold and extractors, sports air-cleaners and a Lukey muffler. Even so he saved his best stuff for himself, and for three years he was next to unbeatable on the track. When he won a six-lap handicap race at Bathurst in October 1955, Jack Myers became the first man ever to take a Holden to victory at the Mountain.

The circuits of this era are a story unto themselves. Australian Muscle Car dipped a toe into these murky waters in the "Sacred Sites" portion of Issue #90, where they quoted Terry Walker's book Fast Tracks: Australia’s Motor Racing Circuits 1904-1995, describing the small country circuits of north-east Victoria as being sprinkled through the region like, "currants in a bun". The seven listed were Wangaratta, Barjarg, Bright, Hume Weir, Tarrawingee, Undera and Winton: Of these, Winton is the great survivor, and Hume Weir needs no introduction, but the rest are probably completely unfamiliar. Frustratingly, AMC only went into any detail with the Wangaratta/Tarrawingee saga, but to be fair there don't seem to be a lot of details out there about the rest.²

The Tarrawingee circuit more properly belongs to the late 1950s, but its origins lie here, in 1953, when the Wangaratta-based North Eastern Car Club gained the right to hold car and motorcycle races on the old Wangaratta Commons Airstrip (just out of town on Greta Road). The barrier between circuit and speedway racing was quite porous in those days, and all the moreso when road circuits tended to be short and had unsealed surfaces. So it was with Wangaratta, a short blast around a rather suggestive layout that could've been designed by Alan Davies. The club held events here for some four years before the drainage problems became too much, and when they were offered a parcel of land in the Tarrawingee Recreation Reserve, they packed up and moved there instead.

It was like this everywhere. In addition to Wangaratta, Victorians also raced on airfields at Ballarat and Fishermans Bend. In NSW, you might race at the established Mount Druitt or Panorama circuits, or you might take your car to the new Gnoo Blas road course just outside Orange instead. In South Australia, you could try your luck at the new Port Wakefield circuit (created to host the Australian Grand Prix, in the teeth of a state government ban on the use of public roads) or, if that crowd was a bit too serious, head for Gawler airstrip instead. In Tassie, since neither Symmons Plains nor Baskerville yet existed, it would have to be the Quorn Hall airstrip near Launceston. In Westralia, it was probably one of a multitude of layouts around (or within!) the south-western town of Collie.

The triumphs, tragedies, heroes and villains of this era of Australian racing are mostly lost to us today – but they existed. Knock off work on Friday arvo, spend the evening converting your daily drive, take it to the track and then have a brilliant weekend kicking up the dust with your mates. When Monday came around, you converted it back and drove it to work again, with no-one the wiser. It might not have been high-stakes racing, but it sounds like it was a lot of fun, and in the process the foundation was laid for what was to come. The Holden 48-215 and FJ in fact fulfilled the same role in Australian touring car racing the venerable '36 Ford coupé did in NASCAR – an inexpensive school for a generation of drivers, a fertile seed bed for the DIY hot-rodding skills of their mechanics, and a spectacular show for spectators who were drawn to the track in ever-increasing numbers.

Notes For Mod-Makers
I'm going to start signing off with some ideas for anyone who might want to make the mod for rFactor 2, Assetto Corsa, or whatever the Kids These Days™ are into. You might think a "Humpy Heaven" mod would be horribly slow and therefore boring, but I say (appropriately enough), not so fast! First of all, bear in mind the James May Principle – no, not "Christian motoring", the principle that a car becomes interesting at the limit of grip of its tyres. With the pizza-cutter crossplies of the era, a Humpy Holden wouldn't need a lot of power to be interesting, providing you got the physics and "car-feel" just right. Moreover, short tracks mean short straights, so the next corner would never be far away (and short tracks also tend to be crowded, meaning there'd be plenty of scope for elbows-out racing). And lastly – the most important factor, for my money – don't overlook the sheer variety of surfaces in this period. By my count there are four distinct surface types to race on here: dirt, oiled dirt³, cold-mix tarmac and hot-mix tarmac. Throw in that Assetto Corsa can model rain, dust and the process of rubbering-in across a weekend, and one need never run the same race meeting twice – and that's before you get into replicating the more extreme modifications the cars were undergoing by the end of the decade.

Too niche? Maybe. But I still think it would be fun, and also a handy way of preserving our motoring heritage for future generations (no, digital is no way to store anything long-term, but it would create some fond memories for people who might otherwise never hear about it). And I think anything's better than yet another GT3 league...

¹ You can tell someone's age by where they know Frankie J. Holden from. For me he'll always be Mr Gribbles from Round the Twist, and I had no idea he was in a band until I began researching this very blog. I didn't think I'd be running into Wilbur Wilde from Hey Hey It's Saturday either, until I saw the music video. There must've been a rule that to be on Australian TV in the '90s, you first had to be in a band in the '70s.

² All links go to speedwayandroadracehistory.com, a very Web 1.0 page, but no less fascinating for that. I recommend hitting up the "lost circuits" tab in your own time, as you're very likely to find something close to your town that you had no idea was ever there.

³ Did I forget to mention they'd often "seal" a track by pouring used motor oil all over it? Horrifying...