The first cinema advertisement for a Holden car was made not long after the first model – the 48–215 or the 'FX’ – rolled off the assembly line at Fisherman’s Bend in November 1948. Since then, General Motors Holden, the Australian manufacturer of the Holden car and subsidiary of the American General Motors Corporation, has produced hundreds of advertisements. Viewed together, these present the changing image of the much-loved Holden – 'Australia’s Own Car’.

The selected advertisements are from 1955 to the mid 1970s, a period that saw postwar expansion, suburban sprawl, significant growth in the transport and automotive sectors and changing social trends and fashions. All these factors gave the Holden a potential ready-made market. When it first began advertising its Holden brand in the late 1940s, GMH marketed its sedans, utes and wagons on the basis of functionality, economy, national pride and suitability to Australian conditions. By the 1960s the Holden product, now firmly established in the psyche of the nation, was presented simply as a product of desire.

In the advertisements of the 1950s and early 1960s, Holdens occasionally ventured out of the suburbs and onto unsealed roads for family holidays and weekends away, but were mostly positioned as urban family cars. With the release of the FJ Holden in 1953 (the next model after the FX), the market for used Holdens was born. By the mid 1950s, Holdens were exported into Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern territories. With expansion overseas, the 'all-Australian car’ boosted national pride.

With the coming of television in 1956, Holden developed a more sophisticated advertising style using theme music and jingles that established the Holden as a symbol of mobility, independence and reliability. Lifestyle was pushed into the foreground and emphasis on the car’s technological and engineering aspects slowly faded.

By 1968, the Holden had been on the market for 20 years. Perhaps in recognition of this, the new 'HK’ model was tagged as 'the new generation’ of car, tapping into the culture of the 1960s. This took the car out of suburbia and firmly into the metropolis and shores of Australian beach culture. The 'new generation’ encompassed both young people with a taste for the good life and those whose leisure activities involved getting their hands and feet dirty.

By the 1970s, rising costs, declining profits and competition from the Japanese automotive industry and overseas car manufacturers meant Holden’s market share was no longer as healthy as in the 1950s. In this context, one of the most memorable advertising campaigns for Holden was created – centred on 'football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars’.

Although these days the Holden is no longer truly 'Australia’s Own Car’, these advertisements represent our enduring fondness for a national cultural icon. Holden cars 'star’ in the 1948 sponsored film Birth of a Car, about the production of the FX Holden; the Cinesound documentary Overland Adventure: The Story of the 1954 Redex Reliability Trial (1954); the television series Division 4 (1969-75), Matlock Police (1971-75) and Kingswood Country (1979-84); and the features Wake in Fright (1971), Oz – A Rock 'n’ Roll Road Movie (1976), Backroads (1977), The FJ Holden (1977), Newsfront (1978), Midnite Spares (1983) and Bondi Tsunami (2004), among many others.

Curator

Poppy De Souza