Your Fathers Car., earliest memory. Options

[wonkipop]

i had a big afternoon of meetings getting a headache listening to net ball australia's special requirements for a girls netball facility.

got home at 7.00pm with a headache.
opened the fridge.
no beer.
ah - sh#t. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

wander out the door, down the lane to the cellar shop to pick up a 6 pack of J beer.
and whats propped on the curb at the end of the lane.

holden fc. 1956-58.
my father's first car (not the actual one but similar - same two tone color, same interior).
my first childhood memory of a car is this one.
would have been 1964/5. sitting in the back seat of one of these little aussie numbers.
sometimes in the front seat. i specifically remember going to the bakery with him to get the bread.

he did have a car before that. a whippet. but i have no memory of that.

anyway this one was there.
completely original. no restoration.
on full plates too. not historic plates.
i have not seen an unrestored one of these for at least 3 decades.
this one was completely intact.
over 65 years old.
the aussie car.
actually a GM product and a kind of shrunken poor cousin north antarctica chevrolet!
but a great car.
these things could survive even a nuclear attack let alone australian roads back then.
ford falcons fell to pieces from the front end back under assault from australian pseudo tarmac. but not these babies.




it blew me away to run into something older than me, and with no plastic surgery. memories came back.

who else has run into their first family car they can remember?
and confronted them again in the street.

post them up. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[wonkipop]

@DaveB

chev and holden engine bays almost identical! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
even down to the wiper motor.

GM had to think up a new place for the battery in holdens.
right hand drive gear got in the way.
good thing the engine bay was mostly air and you could shift sh$t around.
no worries getting your fat fingers in there to change the plugs.




aussies called them grey motors.
for obvious reasons.
red motors came along in the 1960s. high compression.
fancy!

[ClayPerrine]

@DaveB

chev and holden engine bays almost identical! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
even down to the wiper motor.

GM had to think up a new place for the battery in holdens.
right hand drive gear got in the way.
good thing the engine bay was mostly air and you could shift sh$t around.
no worries getting your fat fingers in there to change the plugs.




aussies called them grey motors.
for obvious reasons.
red motors came along in the 1960s. high compression.
fancy!

My father, Betty and I restored his 55 Bel Air convertible. We found the factory assembly manuals on ebay, and bought them. They referenced the Holden and all of the right hand drive components.

The manuals went when he sold the car.

[wonkipop]

@DaveB

chev and holden engine bays almost identical! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
even down to the wiper motor.

GM had to think up a new place for the battery in holdens.
right hand drive gear got in the way.
good thing the engine bay was mostly air and you could shift sh$t around.
no worries getting your fat fingers in there to change the plugs.




aussies called them grey motors.
for obvious reasons.
red motors came along in the 1960s. high compression.
fancy!

My father, Betty and I restored his 55 Bel Air convertible. We found the factory assembly manuals on ebay, and bought them. They referenced the Holden and all of the right hand drive components.

The manuals went when he sold the car.

aussies weren't dumb back then mr. p.
(can't speak for their collective intelligence these days but).
they knew where the best gear came from and who had the right stuff.
at least back then.

except the mother country worshippers who flogged their little morris cars along highways and caused traffic jambs of holdens and fords backed up behind them.

GM always had a good product in holdens right through to the late 70s.
they dropped the ball at that point.
decided to use the GM europe platform. what a mistake.

Thats when Ford got the upper hand on them.

Shortly after that though it didn't matter because Toyota was preparing to karate chop the lot of them and did.


EDIT - in reference to the manuals and right hand drive components.
both ford and holden did sell small volumes of the larger american cars as "lux" vehicles.
can't recall if 55 chevs were, but certainly impalas were, right through from late 50s to late 60s.