Situated in the beautiful wine country of South Australia lies the National Motor Museum at Birdswood. This incredible collection of vehicles traces the importance of transportation in Australia over the last 100 years. Opening in 1965 the centre is not only a museum but a research centre, a place of preservation and an important education tool for the young. The new Holden Pavilion of Australian Motoring offers 3700 square metres of some of Australia’s most important motoring icons including a 45 metre long road train and some very impressive fire engines and commercial vehicles. The centre has traveling exhibitions and some of very interesting examples of important Australian automotive milestones including the a prototype Mitsubishi Magna, a prototype VN series Holden Monaro and the Torana GTR-X developed for the Sydney Motor Show a few years ago.
Official Website: http://www.history.sa.gov.au/motor/about.htm
One of our favorite car ads from the 80s was the Tron inspired marketing campaign for the Holden Camira. The Camira was Australia’s version of GM’s J car program and when first released was a huge success, it even won car of the year. Holden’s marketing line for the Camira was “Supercar” and the early purchasers of the Camira soon found out the only thing that the Camira had in common with a real supercar was poor reliability. The issues that dogged the first model (the JB) affected sales on the whole series, so much so that the New Zealanders refused to take the follow up JD model and imported the Japanese version instead. Some people claim the later models like the JD or JE were fantastic but you still have trouble even giving them away.
As part of our series featuring old car ads we thought we thought a look at a car you may not know but looks all too familiar. The Daewoo Royale was based on the European Opel Rekord that was also produced in England as the Vauxhall Carlton. Australian’s will also note the uncanny resemblance to the Holden Commodore as it too was based on the Rekord design. Many people don’t realize that Daewoo has had a long relationship through a joint venture with General Motors dating back to the early 70’s. In 2001 GM and its partners bought 66% of Daewoo’s assets, today most of Daewoo’s exports are badged engineered as another GM brand like Holden or Chevy. The Royale was produced from 1975 untill 1991 when it was replaced by another Opel derived car the Daewoo Prince.
The Zastava 101 is a car built by Serbian car maker Zastava Automobili sometimes better known as Yugo. The 101 was based on the Fiat 128 that first hit the roads in 1969 with the Zastava version going into production in 1971 and also spinning off a hatchback variety not found on its Fiat cousin. While many people pointed out the more popular Fiat 128 was a bit long in the tooth when it was finally retired in 1985 the Zastava 101 is still produced today as the Skala 5 door hatch with a 55-horsepower, 1.1-liter engine on its one trim level. The Skala is available for around 4000 euro’s and is popular in its home country of Serbia and a few other eastern European countries. These cars were once exported across Europe and along with its bigger brother the 45 but the Balkan war put trade sanctions on the company with NATO later blowing up part of their factory.
Official Site (not in English but good pics of it anyhow)
Any full blooded Aussie can tell you that the Holden Commodore of the 80’s was based on an European Opel, they will also tell you how much of a legend the late Peter Brock was and how much he loved Holden’s. In about 1984 Brocky saw the potential in the Opel Monza, a two door hatch based on the same car the Aussie Commodore sedan was based on, Compared to the Aussie version it had a few good bits like a independent rear end that Brocky liked the idea of so he come up with a plan to import them down under and whack a decent V8 under the bonnet. At the time the concept got a lot of publicity, but it was never to happen. Brock did import one over for evaluation and kitted it out with an array of hot bits including his infamous Energy Polarizer, today the car is in the hands of a collector who has decided to part company with it. So if you got an endless bank balance and want a piece of Brock history check out the full story. The video above is of a Opel Monza from a similar era, if you are from down under would have you bought one back in 1984? let us know in the comments field.
MOTAT is the largest transport and technology museum in New Zealand with over 40 acres of exhibitions. Opening in 1964 the centre is built on a site where a pump station pumped water from Western Springs to the centre of Auckland. The centre has hours of educational entertainment for all ages, there’s an activities centre with over 20 displays including a huge Hand’s on Science Centre. There are all forms of road transportation, trams, railway stock, aviation, military, busses you name it- if it moves they have it. Some of the more notable items in their collection include the only Solent Mark IV Flying Boat in the world and one of only a handful of WW2 Avro Lancaster Bombers in the world, the first chilled beer tanker in the World and Billy T James’ 1954 Chevrolet. MOTAT also has one of the largest fire engine collections in the world. A very impressive collection indeed.
The Cadillac Eldorado was built from 1953 until 2002 but the classics were the early years up to the early 60s which feature huge amounts of chrome and fins. It was in a 1954 Eldorado Convertible (not too much dissimilar to the one in the video above) that Sammy Davis Jnr ran off the road and poked his eye out with chrome centre of the steering wheel. These were the days when car manufacturers built cars for looks alone, today the wheel would be made of soft foam not steel and contain an airbag, he probably would have been held in by his seat belt something people didnt worry about in the 50s. Back then you could mount huge spikes on the cars bonnet and it would of been OK. Today car manufacturers are even designing their cars to be safer for pedestrians as well, we thought pedestrian safety was fitting a horn to every car.
The Borland Racing Daytona Sportscar is a replica of Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe built in 1964. The Borland version features a body that sits space frame with mechanicals from the Holden SS Commodore, but at 1100 kg the 6.0 litre LS1 Gen III V8 certainly packs a punch. The car has been in limitated production since 2001 with only a handful of them built, one of them going to Aussie legend racing driver Peter Brock, he crashed his into a tree killing himself during the Targa West on September 8 2006. The video above is of the last lap recorded before that fateful day, as you can see it takes great skill to keep the thing on the road and unlike Bathurst where you can bounce off the concrete barriers you can easily wrap yourself around a tree. Interestingly the body of the original Shelby Daytona was designed by a guy named Pete Brock no relation to the Peter Brock of Oz.
When you think about the Wankel Rotary engine you instantly think about Mazda, some of you may also remember NSU the German car company that went broke after sinking a lot of money into the Rotary. There also was a third company who thought Rotaries would be good under their bonnet and that was Citroen with their GS Bi-Rotor. Between 1973 and 1977 a luxury version of the Citroen GS was sold with NSU’s rotary engine under the bonnet but when NSU fell in a heap Citroen were left with 847 cars on the road without a source of spare parts. Citroen’s solution was to recall them and buy them all back to be crushed and never mention the Rotary again. A few still survive as some customers loved them to much to sell them back to Citroen, the video above is a Citroen promotional video showing how Citroen did love the Rotary once too. It’s in French but the animations of how the rotary works is pretty cool if you don’t understand the language of the cheese eaters.
Today we feature an ad for the Citroen 2CV that makes it look like a quite attractive car. The 2CV is right up there with the Mini and the Beetle in the cult classic car category. Like the Beetle and the Mini the 2CV was produced long after every other manufacturer had moved on to producing more modern cars but people keep on buying these cars despite them having ergonomics designed in the 40s. The last car ran off the production line in 1990 after 42 years of production.
