Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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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.