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General Motors Holden – FE Holden: The Average Man (1956)

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'The average man' education content clip 1

This clip chosen to be G

Clip description

This clip explains the methods used to design the new model FE Holden. A GMH employee holds a transparent plastic life-size model to demonstrate how the 'average man’ determines the proportions of the car’s interior. The car’s development is traced from initial sketches to a full-size blackboard outline and then a three-dimensional plaster model in the GMH experimental engineering section. The car is put through mechanical and on-road tests. After summarising the work and resources that have gone into the new model, the GMH representative looks out the window onto rows of Holden cars. The clip closes with a title card for GMH.

Curator’s notes

The Holden FE was released in 1956, the same year that television came to Australia. This is one of GMH’s earliest television advertisements and the explanatory style and length reflect cinema advertisements of the time where advertisers had two minutes to address a captive audience. Television soon prompted a shift to shorter advertising, but here the GMH representative takes his time in explaining the drafting, research and testing processes involved in the development of the new Holden.

In the 1950s and 60s, Holden emphasised the authorised Holden dealer as an expert from whom you could buy with confidence (see General Motors Holden – Buy with Confidence, 1968). The GMH representative in this ad functions in much the same way as a reputable Holden dealer – he is a man you can trust, cast in a position of authority and presented as both informed and honest. GMH made a series of television advertisements which centred around this character, building a familiarity with the audience that would have reinforced his trustworthiness (whether or not he was a true GMH representative or an actor is unclear).

In this clip, Holden uses the plastic cut-out 'average man’ to illustrate how the Holden has been developed to accommodate a typical Australian body. This figure (complete with hat!) conformed to the 'general physical appearance of the average Australian’ of the time. The average Australian of today looks a little different – and may not be a man at all. Postwar migration from Europe, and subsequent waves of migration from South-East Asia, the Middle East and most recently Africa, have changed the physical make-up of the 'average’ Australian. In the 1950s, Australian identity seemed fairly fixed and multiculturalism and debates about Australianness were decades away.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This black-and-white clip shows a television advertisement for the 1956 Holden FE sedan. A male General Motors-Holden’s (GMH) representative describes the three-year design and manufacture process involved in developing the new Holden. His voice-over accompanies scenes of a life-sized plastic model of a male driver used to develop the car’s dimensions, initial sketches and blackboard outlines of the car, and a full-scale plaster model. Images of parts testing, road-handling experiments and a row of Holdens conclude the advertisement.

Educational value points

  • With its narrator presented as an authoritative figure seated behind a desk, and scenes of laboratories and men in white coats, this advertisement portrays GMH’s Holden-design process as having a thoroughly researched scientific basis, a crucial selling point for a post-Second World War market. This image of the Holden as an extremely reliable, safe and economical car helped build a loyal post-War customer base that formed the basis of its success over the next two decades.
  • The use of a male model in designing the Holden reflects assumptions about the gender of drivers in the 1950s. While women were an important element in Holden’s early advertising strategies, they were usually placed behind the wheel only when carrying out the duties of mother or housewife. It was not until the late 1960s, when Holden began to target the young and affluent baby boomer generation, that the independent female driver appeared behind the wheel.
  • In 1956, the year the advertisement was made, Holden dominated the Australian car market, a position built on its high-profile local design and manufacture and its heavily marketed status as ‘Australia’s own car’. By 1958 Holden accounted for 43 per cent of car sales. In addition to post-War developments in transportation, increasing prosperity, a rapidly growing suburbia and booming population, a deeply loyal customer base formed the basis of Holden’s early success.
  • Television had just been introduced to Australia in the year the advertisement was made, which possibly explains the advertisement’s use of an authoritative male narrator. This well-spoken man carefully explains the images to an audience reared on radio and well used to such oral explanations, but not yet visually attuned.
  • The advertisement gives some insight into the technological and engineering modelling and testing that the Australian automotive industry undertook in the 1950s. Since the advertisement was made, advances such as three-dimensional computer modelling have changed the way that mass-produced products are designed, tested and manufactured. Additional considerations such as environmental effects are also now important in automotive manufacture.
  • The GMH company, now known as GM Holden Ltd, was originally established as a saddlery and leathergoods business in Adelaide in 1856 by James Alexander Holden (1835–87), evolving into a mass manufacturer of car bodies. In 1931 General Motors-Holden’s was formed when the biggest US car manufacturer, General Motors, bought the company that was by then called Holden’s Motor Body Builders.

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ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

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