Thread: Anyone ever heard of Austrailia's Holden Car Co. ?

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And a back view of the Efigy

Originally Posted by Evolvo

The wife and I went on holiday in New Zealand a few years ago. We where walking around the town of Dunedin on the south island when a 55' chevy UTE, all slammed and painted went flying by. Happened so fast I didn't get a pic and never saw it again, the wife got tired of me trying to track it down.

hey dude this woulda been the ute you saw wouldnt it? its on the site www.trademe.co.nz for $38000 NZD if you keen to import it haha, thatd be cheap as chips in your currency haha

and heres what its got:
This Custom Chevy sits on a Holden 1 tonne chassis, dropped spindles, sway bars, it is truly an amazing ride, turns heads were ever it goes, Cragar mags, runs a 305 with a turbo 350.
Has been in the Top Ten Street Machine NZHRA Nationals

his numbers 0064 3 4821411 names peter. haha the wife will probably be glad you finally tracked it down and can stop goin on about it i bet haha

the 40s holdens are basically what i refer to as big british morris minors, like in the first pic which is an FJ holden
then the 50s ones were basically what i call 50s chevy ripoffs but slightly smaller see second pic
then in the 60s they had the monaro which they imported the 327 chev engine from canada at the last minute to put in it against fords ghto falcon with 351 cleveland. they woulda got wasted if they put it in with the 186 6cylinder engine like planned. i think the 327 gave clearance problems with the steering box in them being the 327 was intended for the lhd cars and monaro was rhd and the rh bank of cylinders was further back if you know what i mean. after the 327 they released it with a 350 chev as per the one in the 3rd pic
then the torana in 7o replaced the monaro as the main race car with the LC Torana GTR XU-1 equipped with a 160 brake horsepower 186 in³ (3 litre) six cylinder engine, fitted with three Zenith Stromberg CD-150 carburettors, cast iron headers, a performance cylinder head and camshaft and an Opel four-speed manual gearbox. This car featured a rear spoiler, guard flutes, wider steel rims, full instrumentation and front disc brakes as standard as in 4th pic haha
then the torana was turned into the 5th pic and called the SLR5000 with an all aussie designed 308cui v8

in the 70s they kept the monaro going with an option of the all aussie 253 v8 or 308 v8 as shown in coupe and sedan forms in the next two pics the coupe having a holden caprice front end. during this time they started releasing these ones as more cruisers as they werent doing bathurst so werent race cars. they had a 350 chev statesman too in the next pic which along with the caprice was holdens full sized luxury market.
then they went through the commodore which was just a re released european opel release down under, i dont really care about then fron then on as i like pre emissions cars the most aye. im by far not an expert and am more a fors man with aussie cars than holdens and this is a real quick history, if youse wanna check it out better look up wikipaedia or holden heaven at www.holden.itgo.com they got a more complete history and seem to have alot more about the performance ones and options which yous would be more into so you can compare the technology of them to the american stuff at the time. a for sale site aswell they were released in various variants including ute sedans and coupes. the modern HSV holdens have been released in the usa as the pontiac GTOs with a different front bumper (i hear they didn take off well) and in europe as the vauxhal monaro. down in oz they are pretty serious about building tough cars. early on the company were assembling cars for australasia for GM and set up a division putting them together in trentham in wellington new zealand where my RHD 66 impala was assembled by fisher bodies imported from canada. this is just a brief history that doesnt show every version of the cars just pics of all the different ones so you can have an idea of the different shapes etc. youtube holens and have a looksee

Time for some more holdens introducing the Colorado!

you blokes are alright , usually us aussies get a bagging of the yanks. anyways i,ve had a shitload of holdens including one of them utes, but my favorite is the xu1 torana .it was just a pommie vauxhal 4cyl that gmh decided would be fun with a stove hot six running triples , these things are worth over a hundred grand now and most of us dickheads cut these things up and raced them. cheers big wad