Australia is crazy about cars. Always has been. For decades, the Holden-Ford debate has been a major topic of conversation, and if you scratch an Australian motorist on something having to do with their car, they will talk to you about your ears. Anything to do with car service is likely to spark a debate, or at least spark a few stories about the problems.
True car culture started in the 1950s. The Baby Boom was in full swing and the postwar population was increasing. The construction industry doubled the size of Melbourne and Sydney, and the newly affluent middle class went out and bought cars like never before.
That’s where the true Holden-Ford rivalry took off. Holden, a subsidiary of GMH, was touted as the Australian car, although Fords were also built in Australia. The Holdens and Fords of the 1950s were tough cars, big steel cars with a variety of tail fins and designs that even to this day look like weird cartoon cars, but it has since been generally accepted that they were big. cars under the hood, regardless of design. .
A whole series of generations of amateur auto mechanics was also born. Australia’s big weekend involved a Saturday or Sunday getting the car fixed (whether it needed repair or not, if not, it was called “tuning”) as often as going to the pub or the beach. The Australian suburbs turned into a sea of cars, with car fans attached.
The next generation of cars included some true classics. The Holden Kingswood and Torana were, respectively, grumpy cars and a famous teenage hoon-mobile, although hoons arguably cared more about the car than themselves. The Kingswood became the police car; the Torana became the hunted car. These cars became truly loved, despite their social roles.
Ford kept its basic 1959 Falcon design. This American design was meant to compete with Holden, who at the time dominated the Australian market, and the Falcons were the first cars to truly challenge that dominance. The original Falcons were pretty big cars and they looked good. They were never the cultural icons that contemporary Holdens were, until the GT series, true “muscle cars”, and they were race cars too.
From the arrival of a real competitor onwards, the Holden-Ford contest was on and never stopped. Since then, a thousand new brands have hit the road, but unless they’ve had some power under the hood, Australian car culture has barely noticed them. Some European cars, notably the E-type Jaguar, RX 7, and XJS, have made people sit up and take notice, but they are not in the traditional image of suburban car culture.
Since then, Commodores and Fairlanes, Hyundais, Mitsubishi and other cars have “diluted” pure Australian car culture, but never really changed it as a social phenomenon. It’s a pretty safe bet that as long as people in Australia talk about auto repair and anything related to cars, the “car culture” will always be with us.