so i am out having a walk.
stretching the strained left eyeball which is suffering from computer screen battle fatigue due to combat drop into construction drawing debacle.

and i stumble on this.

1968 holden hr.
have not seen one of these for at least two decades.
its original. with rust. yes cars rust in australia...........eventually no matter what.

dad had one of these. the sedan version. thats the second car i remember as a child.
dad's was green. but the wagons were cool.

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for those of you yanks (septic tanks in rhyming slang ) interested this is your classic everyman aussie car of the mid 60s. these date from 68. the aus-chevrolet.

apparently GM USA flew out the oldsmobile junior designer team to do all these cars.

this is the car immediately before it.
the holden HD with its pedestrian stabbing front guard extensions.

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it has oldsmobile toronado front guard extensions glued on to something that looked like a cross between a vauxhall and a dodge dart.
went down like a lead balloon in the showroom and the oldsmobile boys had to do a quick shave on the front guards and pull a bit of fakery with indicator lights pretending to be twin headlights to produce the HR. which my dad duly purchased.

bought them time to muck around in the design studio here in melbourne to do a shrink wrap toronado and come up with the evergreen holden monaro.
no rear hip. xerox-ed straight in from the toronado. and poverty-ized in size.
not necessarily a bad thing?

toronado. monaro. boy those guys were on a straight line rail road track when it came to naming cars.

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the monaro came out (along with 4 door family version called the kingswood about 4 months after my father purchased the HR. a case of instant regret i don't think he entirely got over. at least for a few years.).


after wallowing in the nostalgia on the sidewalk for a few minutes of amazement i walked a mere half a block further and stumbled on this rising sun classic in absolutely immaculate condition tucked in a carpark in a block of 60s garden setting apartments.

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it was a fun walk as winter comes to an end.

The 68 Holden looks like a US Chevy II. My father had a 65 4 door with a three on the tree. First car I ever drove at 13. Nobody home on a summer day, so I took it around the block.

The Monaro looks like a Chevy Nova of the same year.

And we got Subaru Brats here in the states. My friend had one in high school.

yep that chevy may as well be a HR.
three on the tree.
i used to pretend i had to move it to wash it for the old man and he would throw me the keys.
reverse it up the drive and into first back down again about 23 times before it was in the ideal spot to clean it. i would have been about 12 or 13.

those subi utes were called a brumby here.
they kind of just did close variations on the names hey.
a brumby is a wild feral horse in australia.

i think the nova is close.
but apparently the key to the monaro was deleted the crease line on the rear fender.
no hip. apparently there was an earlier version with a hip crease line and the toronado man said lose the crease. they are a good looking car in the flesh. fast in straight line esp when they had the chev 350 option. but they hated to go around corners.
mostly the roads are straight lines in australia.

if you look close at the HR in the phots above the rego plate is 913.
i smirked when i saw that.

I don't know about where you are, but here in the states the Subaru Brat got seats in the bed so you could take two more people with you. They didn't get seat belts, just handles sticking up so you could hold on.

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IIRC the seats were removable so you could use it for hauling too. My parents wouldn't let me ride in the back of his. Too dangerous.

thats too cool.

no the fun police banned that sort of texan hoonery down here.

a girl i knew used to haul us all over town in her hilux back in the late 70s.
she would load up. about 10 of us in the car. 3 in the cab and the rest in the tray.
inevitably there would be rotating blue lights and a siren blip and we would get pulled over and threated with a night in the richmond police station if we didn't get out and walk.

It is exactly a nova! Just mirrorized for the aussies

yeah your are right.
same smooth flank.
those toronado boys influenced the whole vast gm sprawling empire.

now if only australia had stayed on track with the american program.
instead of going all commonwealth again.
there is hope with the bee five twos parking in darwin.

here is the family version of the right hand drive nova.
which haunted my father shortly after he purchase his beloved hr.
known as the kingswood.
corny names.

it got the hip. the mirror nova got the smooth flank.
they both got everything the same from the hip forward.

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Kingswood is an old Chevy name. They sold Kingswood station wagons here in the sixties and seventies. Big giant land yachts covered in fake woodgrain.

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My parents had the Oldsmobile version. If you have seen "That 70s Show" on TV, ours was that exact same color and model. I had to sit in the third seat.

HD stood for Hastily Designed and came out in 1965, our family had one with the massive 149 cubic inch engine (called the Red Motor). In 1966 the HD was replaced by the HR (Hastily Rectified)

hah i forgot that designation.

yes, dad's HR had the 161, the massive 149 update.
it was a special. not a standard.
extra lashings of chrome.

@emerygt350
@Maltese Falcon
and other fans of ford

spring time has sprung down here at last.
out for a walk in the sunshine and the guys down the road with their workshop had this out the front basking in the rays.
ford falcon XY GT fully loaded.
not a HO (bathurst spec) i don't think but probably beyond HO spec since originally built.

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yesterday i caught sight of this for the GM brigade.
holden torana mid 70s - basically bathurst 1000 spec.
complete with endurance fuel tank.
he was gone before i could get close.

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a great era of aussie cars.
all of which could kill you due to their inability to take a corner or avoid gum trees along the edge of the road.

Cool... Nice to see some oldies on the road.
Had a PCA cars and coffee yesterday at a local independent repair shop. Went to scope things out to see if they have worked on 914s (since I will need a transmission swap done soon). Spoke to the owner. He asked me what I drove. I replied the 914 -"Oh, the blue one?".

Now, if I had said a 911, he would have replied which one of the 30 or 40? I was the only one there with the 914 prodigal son.

@wonkipop

Isn't that normal for all things Aussie? I mean, things that can kill you, snakes, insects, crocs, spiders, flightless birds, Roos, ex-girlfriends, politicians, bad Vegemite... why not add a few cars that can't corner?

I had to go into Palm Springs for an mri and saw one of those bad boys. Wish I had got a shot of it. But I found one on the internet.

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That is what I thought at first glance!

I have a 67 Nova wagon but it has a frame and small block 427 now

Those look nice. I was just at the vintage races at Watkins and somebody had a late 60s Jensen. Very cool.

@wonkipop ...your Honor did you say the "Utes" ?

What’s a Ute?

A UTE is a pickup truck built from a sedan body. Like an ElCamnio, Ranchero, or a Subaru Brat.

For some reason Aussies just love them!

Ute?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd1CijCUj8w

Bingo,
Cousin Vinny nailed that witness (for prosecution) by his blasphemous speaking of cooking Instant Grits !!!
The two Utes were later acquitted
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I know, I know. I was just mirroring that Southern judge. BTW...Youth

that film is good.
reminds me the USA is a federation of states - all so different but at their finest when all together.

yutes = da fuchure.



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of historical interest as an irrelevant L jet nerd.
its still not clear who invented da yute.
yankistan or ozilasia.
i think it happens about the same time pre ww2.
its all down to farmers. thats da origin of da yute.
but i think its in either case a ford. either here or in your neck of the woods.
yute spells F O R D in either dialect.

some more ozasian sh$theaps for you from the bum end of detroit's rule of the world.
this i think the third facelift of the fabulous holden HQ.
can't remember the date exactly of the HQ intro - think it was 71 or 72.
sometime around about when i did not hit puberty. but the girls did.
various nicknames for this or more properly the original versions.
we use to call them "headquarters". get in the "headquarters" and lets go.

this one has been rotting in place for i reckon about 2 decades.
i walk past it every two years to check it out.
the owner whoever it is keeps the rego current.
and somehow keeps the tyres pumped.
doesn't stop the street tree growing into it.

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i'd have to find images of the original pre face lift version of it and you would see its a weird mix of pontiac and chevrolet. again - everyman car of 1970s australia.

my dad had the yute version.

not a north antarctica classic but some yank iron lurking about down here.

went for my usual walk to long distance adjust my computer screen eyeballs and there were some real horn detroit iron lurking outside the workshop down the block from me.


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these cars were so fricken good.
suspect they were usa restorations imported.
given left hand drive configuration.
but they could have been done here.
both of them were eye watering.

i am so over looking at pumped up audi SUVs.
seeing this stuff is like the moment that yank domestic looks truly exotic.
like an alfa romeo etc in the 80s.
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post script to this is i got chased by an old bloke my age on sunday driving a black edition one boxster. i had to pull over for him.
he dribbled all over the 914. was beside himself.
i tried to explain to him it had 76 hp of L jet nothing-ness but he was still excited.
what has happened. i was held in contempt by other porsche owners back in the 90s

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there is something good about the late 60s and into the 70s?
i dunno?

Happy morning news! Thanks!!