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 Its bigger brother was the E03A Prefect – once famously the first Ford designed outside Michigan, but now sorely outdated, sporting only the bigger "10hp" or 1,172cc version of the English Sidevalve.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.

The Dream before the Dream: The 1956 Melbourne Olympics

The winner was... Melbourne? Australia's most European city had won its bid to host the Games of the XVI Olympiad by just a single vote over Buenos Aires, and as the opening ceremony drew closer the IOC's confidence in Australia hadn't grown. Disputes between state and federal governments over questions of funding had set back construction timetables markedly, and when IOC president Avery Brundage visited the Victorian capital 18 months before the Games were due to open, he expressed publicly his doubts that the city would be ready in time. Nothing ever changes...

And yet Melbourne was ready in time, and they did us proud. And more Australians than ever were able to enjoy the Games thanks to a new invention that had just made it to our shores.

It must be said, all Olympic posters of this era look remarkably fascist.

The Box
From late 1956, in the corners of living rooms across the country, there was a strange new device. For years its place had been occupied by the Wireless, around which the family had gathered to hear news about the war. But this was the 1950s, not the 1940s, and the old had been supplanted by the new. This box was about waist-high, shrouded in wood panelling – a real piece of furniture, in fact – and on the front, where for years had been only the tuner dial and AM/FM selector, there was a small glass screen. Television had come to Australia.

AWA TV manufactured in Australia in 1956. The Old Fart tells me his first TV was an AWA (Source: Powerhouse Collection)

Labor PM Ben Chifley had announced a government-backed foray into television immediately after the war, but his party had been booted from office before anything could come of it, leaving the idea to the tender mercies of Robert Menzies. Uneasy about the possible impact on society, Menzies did what conservatives always do, and stood athwart history yelling stop. He said to a visiting member of the BBC in 1952: "I hope this thing will not come to Australia in my term of office."

Given the sheer length of his term of office however, there was no avoiding it, and Menzies was forced to set up a royal commission into the idea in 1953. The commission recommended that the Television and Broadcasting Act 1942 be amended to allow commercial TV stations, operating along lines similar to those developed for radio. Naturally, the ideal deadline to have the network in place would be the upcoming Olympic Games in Melbourne: To broadcast the Games live around the world? That would be a real coup!

The first four commercial broadcast licences were handed out in 1955, all going to established newspaper firms. Channel Seven in Sydney went to a subsidiary of Fairfax (which owned the Sydney Morning Herald), while Channel Nine Sydney went to Frank Packer's The Daily Telegraph. Channel Seven Melbourne meanwhile was awarded to The Herald & Weekly Times Ltd, owners of The Herald and The Sun, while Channel Nine Melbourne went to a consortium that included The Argus and The Age. In effect, each major city got three channels – Channel Seven, Channel Nine and the ABC – and it would take time for TV to penetrate to more remote areas. Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia would have to wait until 1959, while Tasmania would not join in until 1960 (and as late as the early '80s, a cousin of mine quipped about our rural town having "compulsory television", since we only had two channels – Seven or the ABC – and you couldn't watch the ABC, because it was just news).

TCN 9 Sydney produced their first official broadcast on 16 September 1956, and audiences tuned in to see Bruce Gyngell, immaculately dressed in a dinner suit, utter the immortal words, "Good evening, and welcome to television." HSV 7 Melbourne followed on 4 November, while the ABC began transmitting from Sydney the following day. The phenomenon delighted so much that sales of TV sets boomed, and The Women's Weekly offered advice on how to rearrange living rooms to accommodate this new accessory.

So, how much do you think a new TV cost in 1956? Well, thanks to Trove, we have a nice, detailed breakdown of the costs, and the numbers are startling. The Argus forecast that it was going to cost somewhere in the region of £213 total (that's $8,660 in 2024 money!), of which £175 ($7,115) was for the box itself. To that you could add between £10 and £35 ($400-$1,400) for installation and aerial, and an extra £20-25 ($800-$1,000) any time you needed to replace a worn-out tube (which were promised to last either 6 months or 1,000 hours. The Argus warned that they were expected to need, "eight maintenance calls a year", which some firms were selling like insurance – an £18 premium (i.e. $730) would cover you for the year). And after all that, you still had to fork out another £5/5s ($215) for a U.K.-style TV licence, which would be introduced on 1 January 1957 and remain until it was abolished in late 1974. (Why? Because the cost of sending inspectors around to check everyone's living rooms cost more in wages than they were making back in fines. Apparently, people would dodge the fee by sticking the TV itself in a cupboard and hiding the aerial up the chimney. So all those people who torrent their media? Nothing ever changes.)

So like any new technology, not everyone could afford it, yet several publications predicted it would be quite fashionable to become the first household on your street to own one. Those who couldn't afford a TV of their own would often congregate outside shop windows to watch whatever was on. (Comment sections even contain evidence that some people considered this a date...!)

Source: Melbourne Remember When on Facebook

For many Australians, the Melbourne Olympics were their first taste of television ever, which is very fortunate given it almost didn't happen. All three stations – TCN 9 (Channel Nine), HSV 7 (Channel Seven) and ABN 2 (the ABC) – ended up televising the Games, but the issue of broadcast rights was not sorted out until a mere three days before the opening ceremony. The organisers claimed the rights had to be paid for, while the TV stations pushed hard for the Olympics to be classified as news, which they would be able to broadcast for free. Eventually it was agreed that the rights had to be paid for, and so Melbourne set an important precedent not only for subsequent games, but for televised sport in general.

Original Prankster
On 2 November, in the small Peloponnese town of Olympia, athlete Dionyssios Papathanassopoulos was handed a burning torch and began the first leg of the 1956 Olympic relay. He was the first of 350 Greek runners tasked with bringing the flame from Olympia to its immediate destination – slightly spoiling the romance, a Qantas airliner waiting on the tarmac in Athens. The logistics of getting to Australia meant that, of the more than twenty thousand kilometres the flame was about to travel, three-quarters of it would have to be done by air. As was the style at the time, Qantas flew the flame to Australia in a series of small hops, stopping over in Istanbul, Basrah, Karachi, Kolkata, Bangkok, Singapore and Jakarta. On 6 November, between Singapore and Jakarta, the Olympic flame crossed the equator and entered the southern hemisphere for the first time in history, before landing safely in the Northern Territory capital of Darwin. Here it was given to Tiwi basketball star Billy Larrakeyah for the short run to yet another waiting aircraft, this one an RAAF bomber.

The bomber crew brought the flame to the Queensland town of Cairns, where the relay proper began. The first runner was Con Verevis, a second-gen Australian of Greek parentage, a nod to the origin of the Games. He passed it to Anthony Mark, another well-known Indigenous sportsman from the Kowanyama community in western Cape York. The event was run with military precision, each man (and they were all men) required to complete his mile in under 6 minutes (necessary as the hexamine tablet used as fuel had only 15 minutes of life in it). Runners for the Kew-Burrell Creek section, for example, trained three nights a week at Taree Park (Johnny Martin Oval), carrying a dummy torch of the same weight as the real thing. "Some remember training in bare feet, while others tell of burning eyebrows and hair," Russell Saunders remembered for the Manning River Times. "It had to be held away from the body otherwise the sparks burnt the arm and clothing. Moreover, if you held it in front, smoke fumes billowed straight into your mouth!" 

Melbourne Olympic torch, minus its steel burner. (Source: City of Melbourne Collection)

The torches themselves had been designed by architect Ralph Lavers and, true to Australiana of this period, were essentially a copy of the ones created for London 1948. Unlike the modern day, where manufacturing as many torches as there are torchbearers is a trivial matter, there were only 110 Melbourne torches made, so each had to be reused many times over. As the runners finished their leg, they handed the spent torch to an attendant in the support truck (supplied by GM-H, naturally), who removed the spent fuel cannister, gave it a quick clean and refuelled it ready for its next use. For what it's worth, Holden had recognised the promotional opportunity and provided five new FEs to be used as support vehicles: Holden dealers along the route refuelled, serviced and cleaned them.

Day and night, the flame made its way down the east coast, its bearers menaced by heat and soaking rains, and one torch actually broke when it fell to the ground in Lismore. But the defining event of the relay didn't come until the flame reached Sydney on the morning of 18 November.

Here waited the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Pat Hills, who was due to receive the flame from cross-country champion Harry Dillon. After receiving the flame, Hills was to make a quick speech and then pass it on to another runner, Bert Button, to resume its journey to Melbourne. A crowd of 30,000 had lined the streets to witness the event, with the usual battery of photographers and journalists stood at the ready to record this moment in history.

Then at 9:30am a young man appeared, dressed in grey trousers and a white shirt rather than the official runner's gear, but he was carrying a torch. The crowd began to cheer: the boys in blue shepherded him toward the Lord Mayor and, although taken by surprise at the lad's early arrival, Hills accepted the torch and went straight to the podium to begin his speech.

It took Hills quite a while to realise what he'd actually been handed: by some accounts, he didn't notice until an aide stepped forward and whispered in his ear. To the horror of the organisers, what the Lord Mayor of Sydney was holding was actually a common chair leg, painted silver, with a plum jam tin on top! The flame was burning nothing more noble than a pair of underwear soaked in kerosene. This "Olympic torch" was a forgery, the young torchbearer an imposter. The mayor looked around for the culprit, but he'd already melted back into the crowd and disappeared.

Believed to be the only surviving photo of the incident.

To his credit, Hills regained his composure swiftly. "That was a trial run," he said. "Our friends from the university think things like this are funny. It was a hoax by somebody. I hope you are enjoying the joke." The crowd was not enjoying the joke, in fact, and they became so confused and unruly that the police escort had to clear a path for the real Harry Dillon a few minutes later.

The culprit turned out to be one Barry Larkin, a veterinary student from St. Johns College at Sydney University. He and his mates had dreamed up the prank as a protest against the concept of the torch relay itself, which had been invented by the Nazis for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Larkin himself was never meant to be the torchbearer, the original plan giving that job to another student dressed in a white shirt and shorts like the real runners (another student had dressed in an RAAF Reserve uniform to act as a fake military escort). When this other student had stepped into the street and begun running toward the venue, he elicited a few chortles from the crowd, but then he'd waved his arm a tad too dramatically and flung the burning undies out of their jam tin and onto the ground. Panicking he'd fled, forcing another of the pranksters to retrieve the device and hand it to Larkin, who was sent on his way with a firm boot to the rump.

Few people knew what Harry Dillon looked like, so when a young bloke had appeared carrying a burning torch, everyone had just assumed he was legit. Larkin later recalled in an interview:

The noise was quite staggering. There were flashes of photography. I felt very strange because I knew I was carrying a fake torch. The only thing I could think about was what do I do when I got there. I was helped by Pat Hills. I just turned around and walked back down the steps, through the crowd and onto a tram and back to college.

Larkin was never charged, and indeed remained largely unidentified until the late '90s. When he fronted for an exam the following morning, his fellow students gave him a standing ovation and, although he failed the exam ("That's another story..."), he eventually completed his studies and went on to have a successful career as a veterinary surgeon. The fake torch ended up in the hands of John Lawler, a man who'd been travelling with the relay in a car. He stored it under his bed for several years until, eventually, it was thrown away by his mother while she was tidying his house. Even so, the event had caused quite a stir: The Sydney Morning Herald said it, "set a new standard for pranks", while London's The Independent called it, "the greatest hoax in Olympic history". Personally, I'd say it bears mentioning in the same breath as, say, the Chaser boys getting a fake motorcade into APEC summit. Nothing. New. Under. The Sun.

Let the Games Begin
The main venue for the Games was the storied Melbourne Cricket Ground – already more than a century old and recently upgraded, with the Northern or Olympic Stand built to replace the old Grandstand, making it one of the greatest sporting venues in the world. 103,000 people piled in for the opening ceremony, bearing witness to the arrival of guests from a dizzying array of countries. As the hosts, Australia had entered the second-largest team in the Games, with 294 athletes ready to contest almost every event – almost as many athletes as we'd sent to the previous twelve Games combined, in fact. Only the United States had brought a bigger team than us, with 297, and we outnumbered even the 272 of their arch-rivals, the Soviet Union. At the other end of the scale, the prize for the smallest Olympic team was probably a three-way tie between Iceland, Hong Kong, and North Borneo, who'd sent just two athletes each (which makes it remarkable that Iceland would leave with a silver medal in the men's triple jump). North Borneo were in fact making their only Olympic appearance, as come 1963 they would be subsumed into the new state of Malaysia, while also on their first Olympics were tiny Fiji (with a proud team of four), and Liberia. Afghanistan meanwhile had sent twelve athletes, all of them part of a single field hockey team. Overall, there were more than 3,300 athletes marching in the opening ceremony, representing a globe-spanning 67 countries.

It could've been more, but nine teams had axes to grind and chose to stay home instead. Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Cambodia all boycotted in protest of the Suez Crisis (in which Australia had admittedly been quite complicit), while the Netherlands had managed to talk Spain, Liechtenstein and Switzerland into joining a boycott over the ongoing Soviet invasion of Hungary (although, in deference to their concerns, the Soviet team joined a number of other countries in competing under the Olympic flag rather than the hammer & sickle). Mao's mainland China, meanwhile, chose to withdraw after a dispute over whether it was they or Taiwan who had the right to compete as the "real" China. It was a lot of bad blood for what was supposed to be "the Friendly Games", and although it is true that athletes from both East and West had come together to compete as a single unified Germany, that too would be going away once the Berlin Wall nonsense started in a few years' time.

The Olympic flame was carried into the stadium by a 19-year-old Ron Clarke (future Olympic bronze medallist, world record holder and Gold Coast mayor), who bore it aloft in a special, more ornate version of the Olympic torch. The flame itself was similarly unique as, worried it might not "read" on those tiny suburban TV screens, the organisers had added a touch of magnesium to the burner to really make it pop. Clarke completed his lap of honour, lit the big cauldron that marked the formal start of the Games, and then discovered he'd actually been quite badly burned, with several holes singed in his t-shirt and nasty burns around his right arm and wrist. He remained sanguine, telling the Sydney Morning Herald: "It was terrific being out there. I did not feel the burns at all until afterwards."

And with that, the games of the XVI Olympiad officially began. You can watch the official film here, either in a single movie-length feature or as a series of 20-minute vignettes.

Jesse Owens, now middle-aged, still much fitter than you or me. (Source: Official Olympic film.)

The guest of honour (in a sense) was the legend himself, Jesse Owens. Twenty years before, in Berlin, Owens had made a mockery of the Nazi doctrine of racial supremacy by personally winning four gold medals (in the 100m sprint, long jump, 200m sprint and 4x100m relay – the first three on successive days. And yet, that was arguably only the the second most impressive feat of his athletic career...!). Indeed, his long jump gold had been won without breaking his own World Record, which in 1956 was still unbeaten. What's even more amazing is that it remained unbeaten when the Games were over: compatriot Gregory Bell took home the gold after a jump of 7.83 metres, but Owens' 8.13-metre record still loomed over it all. Not until Rome 1960 would Owens see his last record fall.

Watching it back, it's clear some things have changed significantly, while some have stayed remarkably the same. An event that hasn't changed much is your bog-standard 100 metre sprint. In Paris 2024, of course, it was won by Noah Lyles (and his tiara...) in a blistering 9.79 seconds. In Melbourne, it was won by the Texan, Bobby Morrow, in 10.5 seconds. That's... not as much improvement as I'd have expected, given seven decades of growing professionalisation, better nutrition, improvements in training, etc. I know the margins aren't going to be huge on such a short event, but it surprised me all the same. Almost like Mother Nature had already run a several-million-year programme to optimise the human beast for running...

Dumas certainly had style. (Source: The Geelong Advertiser)

The high jump, on the other hand, looked very different. Today we're used to seeing jumpers fling themselves over backwards, but in 1956 things weren't done that way. Everyone ran at the bar and leapt over it like primary schoolers at their first sports day, treating it like nothing more than an unusually high hurdle. The reason is that the backwards technique was yet to be popularised by Dick Fosbury, who would use it to win a gold in Mexico City 1968. Since then the technique has been known as the Fosbury Flop, but you'll note the operative word in the previous sentence was "popularised", not "invented". The move was known before 1968, but almost nobody used it because – as you'll see if you watch the footage – the landing pad back then wasn't a nice, thick, cushioning foam mattress, but a simple pile of sand. Doing the Fosbury Flop into a sandpit would probably be a short cut to a broken neck, so jumpers were restricted to methods that allowed them to land safely on their own two feet. In the end, the event came down to a contest between Australian wool grazier Charles "Chilla" Porter, and America's Charles Dumas. The bar eventually went too high for Chilla, who was unable to clear anything higher than 2.10 metres. Dumas managed a 2.12 and so took home the gold.

The darling of the Games was our "Golden Girl", Betty Cuthbert, who won both the women's 100m and 200m sprints before anchoring the 4x100m relay team. When it was all over, she returned to her ordinary suburban home with three gold medals and a new status as Australia's Sweetheart. In effect, Betty Cuthbert ran so that Cathy Freeman could... run even faster, I guess? Anyway, the senior member of the women's team, Shirley Strickland, managed two gold medals in her final Olympics, winning the 80m hurdles (reducing the World Record to 10.7 seconds along the way) and teaming up with Cuthbert for the 4x100m relay (again resetting the World Record, this time to 44.5 seconds) – ending her career with a formidable collection of three gold, one silver and three bronze medals.

Busting a gut: Cuthbert claims some more precious metal. (Source: The West Australian)

But the track and field medals were just a bonus. The real business was in the pool where, establishing a trend the world would recognise in coming decades, the Australians absolutely cleaned up. The venue for these events was Melbourne's Swimming and Diving Stadium – what is now known as AIA Vitality Centre – and it would see the Olympic debut of one of the sport's greatest exponents, Murray Rose, and a straight-up household name, one Dawn Fraser. Dame Dawn won gold in the 100m freestyle and 4x100m freestyle, plus a silver in the 400m freestyle, while Rose claimed a trio of golds in the 400m freestyle, 1,500m freestyle and 4x200m freestyle (not for nothing do they call it the Australian Crawl). Adding to the medal tally was David Theile, winner of the 100m backstroke; Jon Henricks, winner of the 100m freestyle; and Lorraine Crapp, who managed a 400m freestyle and 4x100m freestyle relay gold medal double (Though she never escaped the jokes: "Why does Dawn Fraser swim so fast?" my Pop never failed to ask. "Because she saw Lorraine Crapp in the pool!"). When everyone towelled off, Australia had walked off with 8 of a possible 13 gold medals in swimming – more than half of our final Olympic total.

Rose Gold. And at just 17, he had plenty left in the tank, too. (Source: Nine.com.au)

But of course, the biggest talking point of the Games was another swimming event entirely...

Concerning Hungarians
Though it might be over-generalising, I think it's fair to say the Hungarians are a very independent people. They'd spent the 19th Century levering themselves out of the decrepit Habsburg Empire, a process that had only been accelerated by the outbreak of the First World War, which for complicated reasons had then led to Hungary siding with the Nazis under their own fascist dictator, "Admiral" Miklós Horthy (and if you're wondering why I'm putting scare quotes around the word "admiral", well, have a quick look at Hungary on a map). In the immediate post-war world, however, their fascist past didn't do much to endear them to their new Soviet overlords, who after everything they'd been through were determined to keep Germany weak and divided, with a series of nice, compliant buffer states between themselves and Berlin.

By 1956 the war was over a decade in the past, people were beginning to move on with their lives, and – probably the most important point – Stalin himself was now dead (they made a whole movie about it). Filling his shoes was a new guy, Nikita Khrushchev, a peasant's peasant who was barely three years into his tenure as General Secretary of the Communist Party. As a result, 1956 saw a wave of unrest on the far side of the Iron Curtain. Protests in Poland, for example, managed to avoid civil war, and in fact resulted in concessions even as Soviet rule was reaffirmed, so a number of Hungarians felt the time might be right to tug at their chains and see how loose they might be.

They were mistaken. Khrushchev's response would've made Stalin proud, rolling in 30,000 Soviet troops and over a thousand tanks, crushing the uprising within two weeks. By the time the dust settled, the Soviet Union was firmly back in the driver's seat, and at least 2,500 Hungarians had been killed.

Busy training outside Budapest when the revolution began, the reigning Olympic champions heard the gunshots and saw the smoke rising above the city, but were kept in the dark about the true scale of what was happening. To keep them out of harm's way, they were moved to allied Czechoslovakia before making the journey to Australia, only discovering what had truly taken place after they arrived in Melbourne. Finding themselves matched against the Soviet team in the semi-final match on 6 December, the Hungarian team saw a chance to regain some national pride.

The atmosphere in the Swimming and Diving Centre was tense from the beginning. The Hungarians came in planning to provoke their opponents by insulting them in Russian. Said Hungarian star Ervin Zádor: "We had decided to try and make the Russians angry to distract them."

It worked. With the score at 2-0, Soviet player Boris Markarov punched Hungarian Antal Bolvári, triggering a series of brawls up and down the pool that took the referees some time to bring under control. If that had been the end of it, this still would've been a match for the record books, but the worst was yet to come.

The Hungarians were leading 4-0 when, in the final quarter, Valentin Prokopov suddenly planted one right on Ervin Zádor's face. The blow was so hard it drew blood, and images of Zádor beside the pool, blood streaming down his face, earned the game the moniker, "the Blood in the Water match". At the sight, the 5,000-strong crowd – most of them Hungarian expats – lost their minds and rushed poolside, aiming to get their hands on the Soviet team as soon as possible. The Victorian police were forced to intervene, and the officials called time on the game to give all athletes the chance to leave the venue alive. Since they'd been leading when the whistle blew, the Hungarians were declared the winners.

Zádor on his way to the infirmary. (Source: KGOU)

Luckily, even without the wounded Zádor, the Hungarians prevailed 2-1 in the final against Yugoslavia, and so earned gold for their second Olympics in a row. But it was a bittersweet victory. After quiet, intense discussions behind the scenes, 46 Hungarian athletes and coaches refused to return to their homeland, seeking political asylum in the west instead. At first they were spurned, but then Sports Illustrated got involved and convinced the U.S. to offer asylum to 34 of them, including water polo team members Miklós Martin, Antal Bolvári and, yes, Ervin Zádor. Another dozen went to other western countries, with featherweight wrestler Bálint Galántai even finding a home here in Australia.

The Final Accounting
The Soviets had the last laugh, though. They emerged from the Games with a grand total of 98 medals – 37 gold, 29 silver and 32 bronze – the highest medal count of any country in the world, including the United States' 74. It might not be official, but to a certain kind of person the country at the top of the medal table will always be considered to've "won" the Olympics, and in 1956 that was the United Soviet Socialist Republics. Australia was first behind the ideological titans, winning 35 medals in total (13 gold, 8 silver and 14 bronze)... although just behind us was none other than the Hungarian People's Republic, with 26.

The hostility of that water polo match was still on everyone's mind as the closing ceremony approached. The TV news at night was full of Cold War tensions, and after the ugliness of the Sèvres agreement, the Suez Crisis, Hungarian Revolution and the most violent water polo match of all time... well, it all rather undercut the idea that this was The Friendly Games.

Seeking a more hopeful note to end on, organising committee chair Kent Hughes gave the nod to a suggestion made by a 17-year-old Chinese-Australian named John Ian Wing, changing the format of the closing ceremony substantially. Rather than marching as separate teams behind their respective flags, Wing suggested that athletes be allowed to march freely as individuals, mixing and mingling as equal citizens of a single, unified world. Once again Melbourne had established a precedent, for not only did the organising committee adopt Wing’s suggestion, it has been the tradition at every Olympic Games since. Wing said:

During the march there will be only one nation. War, politics and nationality will be forgotten. What more could anyone want, if the whole world could be made as one nation?

What indeed.