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HOW could Australia’s only contribution to the world’s vocabulary of automotive styles not make this list? Young Lew Bandt was the only designer employed by Ford Australia in the early 1930s, when the company’s management thought it might be worthwhile building something suggested in a letter from the wife of a Gippsland farmer.

The problem was that the car-based utes of the day were crude. Functional load carriers for sure, but cramped and uncomfortable to ride in, and lacking any hint of stylishness. The farmer’s wife yearned for something better.

Turning her dream into reality became a job for Bandt, then in his early 20s. His solution was based on Ford’s sidevalve V8-powered 40A Coupe. Instead of the

tacked-on, separate tray of earlier utes, Bandt’s design clothed the cargo compartment in a smooth continuation of the coupe’s bodywork. It looked good, the coupe-size passenger compartment was roomy, and banks would loan farmers money to buy it.

The influence of Ford Australia’s 1934 Coupe Utility can be traced all the way to today’s Commodore Ute, but Bandt’s brilliance also reached across the Pacific Ocean. In the late 1950s first Ford, then Chevrolet, launched long-running model lines that owed a conceptual debt to the idea of the young Australian. Americans probably imagine their Ranchero or El Camino is as American as apple pie, but they’re the brainchildren of a bloke who undoubtedly preferred his portable pastry filled with meat.

The Greatest

Australian Car –

Ever

It had to be buIlt here, It had to be seen as

great In Its tIme, and stIll worth the tItle today.

we asked wheels staff, current and former,

to vote In a secret ballot, and these are

the results, ranked from 10 to 1.

prepare to be surprIsed

01F O R D

C O U P E U T I L I T Y

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F O R D F A L C O N F G8 GREATnEss isn’t the same thing as great sales. Ford’s FG Falcon is selling at a slower rate than any other model in the nameplate’s half-century history in Australia. But it’s arguably a better car than any of the three million or so Falcons, spanning six generations, produced before it.

soon after launch it became the first Australian-made car ever to earn a five-star rating from the Australian new Car Assessment Program. And since then Ford Australia has steadily improved and expanded the FG line-up.

The super-fast performance variants from FPV, recently brought in-house by Ford Australia with a buy-out of former partner Prodrive’s share of the business, may get the most motoring-mag ink. Recording the best 0-100km/h times ever seen from an Australian-made model will do that.

But it’s the most affordable versions of FG

that also are the most outstanding. The basic models have benefited most from changes, everything from the switch to six-speed ZF automatic transmissions across the entire range with the 2010 Mk II facelift to the introduction of better basic infotainment electronics.

The 2012 introduction of the 2.0-litre, four-cylinder Ecoboost variant was what propelled the FG Falcon into this elite company. Look around the world for cars which, like it, install four- and six-cylinder engines, as well as V8s, and you’ll find Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz leading the list. The Ecoboost Falcon proves that Ford Australia’s engineers are as adept as any European at doing downsizing that works brilliantly.

It’s remarkable that Ford Australia has managed, in hard times, to create such honest and admirable cars. Remarkable, too, that its work is sneered at or ignored by so many.

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AUsTRALIAns were to make the HQ the

best-selling Holden of all time, buying close

to half a million of them between 1971

and 1974. But that unrivalled sales tally of

485,650 isn’t the reason it’s here. This wasn’t

a perfect Holden. Anyone who’d thumbed

through the 1971 Car of the Year issue of

Wheels would have known the HQ didn’t

win because it was built for comfort, not for

speed … nor corners, either, for that matter.

‘Jet-smooth ride’ was the advertising

promise, and the slogan’s emphasis on ride

comfort was no accident. The HQ featured

Holden’s first all-coil spring suspension, but

American managing director George Roberts

had insisted it should ride like a Cadillac of

the day. sadly inevitable was that it would

also handle like one. still, the HQ does

deserve inclusion among Australia’s greats.

It was the first really all-new Holden since

the 48-215, but unlike the first Holden, the

HQ was engineered here. And the company

made the most of the opportunity. As well

as the Belmont, Kingswood and Premier

sedan line-up, there was a wagon, a ute, a

panel van, a coupe, a cab-chassis ute and

a long-wheelbase luxury version. It was a

massive effort, and highlighted the design

and engineering ingenuity of the Australian

industry. Holden’s engineers also endowed

the HQ with a very tough monocoque body. It

was a car that could take punishment, when

most roads dished it out by the bucketful.

The HQ also must be numbered among the

best-looking cars Australia has produced. A

Pontiac designer on loan from Detroit, John

schinella, styled the HQ, with plenty of help

from young Australians in Holden’s studio.

Its remarkably slim A-pillars and great

forward vision are reminders that, in some

ways at least, the past really was better.

H O L D E N H Q

67V A L I A N T C H A R G E R E 3 8 / E 4 9

THEsE days $2 million might buy a car maker a new doorhandle design. In the early 1970s it was enough to develop a new variant of an existing car. Chrysler Australia’s Valiant Charger project relied on a brand of resourcefulness that was becoming a trademark of the Australian car industry. This can-do, low-cost spirit had already produced big results on small budgets; cars like Ford’s XR Falcon station wagon and Holden’s HK Monaro coupe. But the Charger was more audacious, more special.

One thing that made it so was stylishness. The Charger was built on a version of the VH Valiant platform, shortened by 150mm

(six inches). Even though it was essentially a bobtail rear-end grafted onto the mainstream model’s nose, it worked. With the aid of a memorable and effective ad campaign with its ‘Hey Charger!’ catchline, the Valiant’s looks attracted hordes of paying customers.

To the car’s beauty could be added a streak of beastliness. Although V8 engines were part of the Charger model mix, it was the better handling high-performance versions of Chrysler’s in-line six that powered the car to greatness. Right from the beginning, the E38 option package lifted the power of the 4.3-litre (265 cubic inch) engine, with its trio of twin-throat Weber

carburettors, to nearly 210kW. Revised gear ratios for the three-speed manual were also part of the deal. From Charger’s second year of production, 1972, the E49 option package upped power again, to 225kW, and included a four-speed Borg Warner manual. These homologation option packs never delivered victory at Bathurst, but magazine testers found the Charger was a V8-beater on their dragstrips.

Created on a shoestring budget by an outfit overshadowed by both Holden and Ford Australia, the E38 and E49 were the most outstanding cars produced by Australia’s brief but glorious late ’60s to early ’70s muscle-car era.

H O L D E N 4 8 - 2 1 5YOU CAn’T knit a plane, a ship or a gun. Through World War II, Australia wasn’t riding on the sheep’s back quite as high as it would in the early 1950s, but its dependence on agriculture concerned the country’s leaders. Isolated and threatened, Australia’s lack of industrial capacity was an obvious weakness. During the war there was an urgent program to increase Australia’s capacity to make the complex machines needed to fight. But what, once the shooting stopped, would sustain the nation’s new-found manufacturing ability? The answer, Australia’s wartime Labor leaders decided, was cars…

That’s why a hat-clutching former

locomotive driver from Bathurst was photographed beside the first Holden at its official introduction in november 1948. Prime Minister Ben Chifley had waited years for this moment. He’d been Treasurer when, with the war still raging, discussions began with both General Motors and Ford on how best to start a peacetime car industry in Australia. General Motors’ less costly scheme won government favour. By 1946 a small team of Australian engineers was in Detroit working on prototypes and Chifley, after the death of John Curtin in July 1945, had been Prime Minister for a year.

Today it’s impossible to imagine any result of government policy being as popular as that

first Holden. The car, based on an unused design for a compact, post-war Chevrolet, was very basic: 45kW 2.2-litre (133 cubic inch) in-line six, three-speed column-shift manual and rear-drive. But it was roomy, tough and quicker than many contemporaries. At first, Holden production literally couldn’t keep up with demand. It was said people bought cars like the standard Vanguard because they couldn’t get a Holden.

The 48-215 wasn’t only a showroom success. Here was proof Australia could produce more than countless bales of wool. It was an accomplishment to be proud of, and it changed what Australians thought of themselves and their nation’s capability.

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45H O L D E N V 2 M O N A R O

COnsPIRACY, for some reason, has a bad name. But cunning and connivance was what it took to give the spark of life to a concept that brightened a dull era for the Australian industry.

Holden design boss Mike simcoe had started work on a VT Commodore-based coupe at home, sticking tape drawings to one of his walls. Work continued in secret in Holden’s studios as the conspiracy spread. The project was only revealed to Holden managing director Jim Wiemels four weeks ahead of the sydney motor show. The American exec must have been surprised, but he let them build the concept car.

Totally unexpected, the impact of the Coupe Concept at the sydney show, late in 1998 was so huge it must have registered on seismographs. Media instantly decided it had to be called Monaro and should be put into production pronto.

It was Wiemels’ replacement, Peter Hanenberger, who made sure that it happened. The German executive arrived early in 1999, and was soon working on a watertight business case.

There were compromises on the way to getting the V2, as it was known internally, into production in late 2001. But the car’s elegant and understated

style emerged unscathed. Although a supercharged V6 version was offered initially, hardly anyone wanted the coarse and uninspiring 3.8-litre. But General Motors’ 5.7-litre Gen III V8, well, that was a different matter…

By 2002, following a visit to Australia by GM product supremo, the legendary Bob Lutz, plans were afoot to turn the Monaro into a GTO for Pontiac in north America. This involved rather more than a simple grille redesign, but by 2003 the deal was official. soon it was a Vauxhall in England, too. As conspiracies go, the Commodore Coupe was a surprising success.

F O R D X R F A L C O N G TAUsTRALIAn ’60s cinema never produced an equivalent of the famed pursuit scene from Bullitt, that nine-minute chunk of carefully choreographed 1968 excitement that changed forever the way car chases were filmed. Argue, if you like, about which actor could have been our steve McQueen. Discuss which of our cities might have taken the place of san Francisco. But there can be no question which car would have best fitted the role of McQueen’s snarling, smoking Mustang GT fastback…

Ford Australia promoted its 1966 XR as the ‘Mustang Bred Falcon’, and the car won a second-in-a-row Wheels Car of the Year award. One of the chief reasons the trophy ended up on Ford Australia’s mantelpiece is that the company had responded to the magazine’s insistent calls for Made in Australia V8 power.

While Ford’s 4.7-litre (289 cubic inch)

Windsor V8 was an option across the new range from its 1966 launch, it wasn’t until the following year that the Mustang claim really came true. The Falcon GT combined the high-performance 168kW version of the little Windsor V8 used by its American cousin car and a four-speed floor-shift manual, instead of the regular range’s three-speed.

nearly all of the GTs produced were painted a bronze colour named ‘GT Gold’, and gold is exactly what the car earned at Mount Panorama in the Gallaher 500 the same year it was launched. The 1967 Bathurst victory of Harry Firth and Fred Gibson earned instant racetrack credibility for the GT, and provided the blueprint for generations of road-going V8 sedans to come. The arrival of the XR GT was a pivotal moment in our motoring history, one with enduring consequences.

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F O R D B A F A L C O N X R 6 T U R B OnOTHInG underlined Falcon’s 2002 great leap forward more emphatically than the XR6 Turbo. At the 1998 launch of its predecessor, the AU, senior executives involved in its design, engineering and development seemed proudest of the way they’d brought the project in on time and under budget. Misers manufacture misery, as buyers found out.

To reverse Falcon’s sales nosedive, more had to be done than scraping off the last-minute layer of ‘new Edge’ global design philosophy that had been applied as the AU neared production. While the car looked like the design team had stopped work in the middle of an argument, even worse was that it drove as though engineered by people who didn’t care about anything except the price of its parts.

no-one knew all this better than the man who was appointed Falcon car line director

in 2000. Trevor Worthington, from country Victoria, had worked for Ford since 1985, in Australia, Taiwan and the UsA. He had firm ideas on how things had gone wrong with AU, and even firmer ideas on how they should be fixed. Under his leadership, Ford Australia’s designers and engineers came up with the best Falcon for more than three decades.

There was a new independent rear suspension beneath all BA sedans, sophisticated (for the time) electronic systems, a vastly improved interior and an exterior that looked nothing like the AU. But it was Falcon’s practically all-new six-cylinder engine that made the most difference. Improved in every way, the Geelong-manufactured 4.0-litre codenamed ‘Barra’ was more refined and more powerful in its basic, naturally aspirated form. And also had the strength needed to cope with the stresses of turbocharging.

The 240kW turbo ‘Barra’ of the new-for-BA XR6 Turbo model instantly made every Australian-made V8 then on sale seem stupid. Performance testing soon proved that neither VY Commodore nor BA Falcon V8s could match its pace. The super six’s spread of torque was broad and beautifully delivered. sounded good, too.

BA’s mostly new chassis, especially the ‘Control Blade’ IRs, meant the XR6 Turbo wasn’t overwhelmed by its engine. There was a distinctly European flavour to the way the Turbo drove. no accident; leader of the BA vehicle dynamics team was a talented Dutchman, Alex de Vlugt.

After years learning to expect as little as possible from Ford Australia and Falcon, the BA XR6 Turbo was a massive moment. Brilliantly quick, wonderfully refined and huge fun to drive, it snarled defiantly that Ford Australia had changed its ways.

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F O R D T E R R I T O R YIn THE end, only a handful of votes relegated the sX Territory to second place in our Top 10 showdown. It really was that close, and Ford’s 2004 all-roader deserves its place high in the list of Australian greats. The Territory was a brave and brilliant departure from an accepted, comfortably familiar formula. It was a superbly executed crossover, with truly world-beating handling, ride comfort and practicality.

The Territory story begins in the late 1990s, when Ford Australia’s leadership grew concerned that the country’s preferences were changing. Building a large sedan and using it as the basis for a variety of derivatives – wagons, utes, long-wheelbase, and so on – was the model that had worked in the past. But with large-car sales in unstoppable decline, it obviously wasn’t going to be sustainable in the future.

By 2001, after an extensive research program had led into the expensive development of a detailed design, Ford

Australia had its answer ready. Company president Geoff Polites, one of the best car- industry executives the country has ever produced, took on the task of persuading Detroit to approve the project. With the help of a stunning 40 percent scale model of what would eventually be named Territory, and a persuasive presentation by vehicle line director Russell Christophers, Polites flew back with the $500 million needed to make it a reality.

Territory made intelligent use of Ford Australia’s existing component set. It had Falcon’s 4.0-litre six-cylinder engine and four-speed auto, the ‘Control Blade’ rear suspension introduced in the 2002 BA, and shared the sedan’s engine box. But the rest of the body structure was new; it had to be, to accommodate seven-seat and five-seat versions. The front suspension and steering, which had to be compatible with AWD, was all-new and no-compromise. It was only in 2006, two years after Territory’s launch, that

BMW adopted a strikingly similar double A-arm design for the second-generation X5.

Dynamics were a Territory strong point. It rode and handled and steered better than many crossover sUVs costing much, much more. still does. Also outstanding was the perfect calibration for Australian conditions of its Bosch-supplied chassis control electronics. The finesse and effectiveness of the Territory’s EsC calibration is still unmatched by most competitors. Inside, the Ford had great seating and a myriad of places to stash stuff. It was every bit as useful as it was enjoyable to drive.

Polites died of cancer, aged 60, in 2008. He was running Jaguar and Land Rover by then, and had just negotiated Ford’s sale of the Brit brands to Tata of India. He never saw Territory sales overtake Falcon, to confirm his conviction that Ford Australia’s sustainability would one day depend on the vehicle he had brought to life.

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H O L D E NV E C O M M O D O R E

In MAnY ways the VE Commodore is the best car Australia has ever created. At its core are virtues of strength, spaciousness, and sophistication, which serve equally well in everything from a humble V6 Omega sportwagon fleet car to a growling V8 E series sports sedan costing twice as much. While it’s the kind of large car that’s become this nation’s speciality, the 2006 VE is different from any earlier Commodore. At last given the chance to design, engineer and develop a car from a clean-sheet starting point, Holden grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

Boneheads blinded by the expensively burnished images of premium brands simply will not believe Australian engineering can equal or best that of, say, Germany. But it’s true. The wholly Holden chassis of the VE invited comparisons with similar-size cars from Munich and stuttgart. When the VE was launched, seven years ago, there certainly wasn’t a contemporary BMW that steered with the beautifully fluid accuracy and consistency of the Holden. And its suspension set-ups, perfectly calibrated for comfort and control on our roads, were probably superior to most Mercedes.

Equally outstanding was the VE’s shape. Every previous Commodore was basically Opel’s work. Turning a European Omega into a car for Australia meant strengthening, stretching and different interiors. But the exterior was always designed to please those living in the Heidelberg that’s not in Melbourne. The internal competition among Holden’s designers for the right to design VE Commodore’s skin was won by Peter Hughes. Way back in 1999 he’d made the sketch that remained a touchstone for the exterior design team throughout the program. It was the starting point for the full-size clay model of his design that was eventually selected ahead of a competing proposal from another Holden designer.

It’s a great shape; a perfectly proportioned combination of dynamic drama and easy elegance,

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precisely and simply detailed. It was admired from afar by eminent designers. Jaguar’s Ian Callum was one of them. He found out who had designed the VE’s exterior from Hughes’ former boss, Mike simcoe, who was working for General Motors in Detroit by the time the car launched. The generous scot made a point of sending Hughes an email saying how much he admired the VE’s exterior.

But good looks and fine dynamics aren’t the only reasons the Holden heads our 10 Greatest. It’s no accident that the first three cars on our list are products of the noughties. This was an era when Australia’s car makers were facing, for the first time ever, an operating environment not rigged heavily in their favour.

The Australian car industry spent its youth wearing a protective tariff burka. At the time of the VE, it was down to a G-string and tassels pasted to its nipples. Back in 1971, for example, the year of the HQ launch, non-British built imports had 45 percent added to their prices between dock and driveway. By the end of the decade the rate had risen to 57.5 percent, regardless of country of origin. But from the late 1980s the Button Plan of Bob Hawke’s Labor Government began to strip away 2.5 percent a year, gradually exposing both the Australian car market and car makers to the lustful gaze of overseas competitors. By the time the VE was ready for market in 2006, tariff protection was down to 10 percent. Today the twirling tassels are gone, and it’s just five percent.

There were additional challenges the VE faced. The market share of large cars was in obvious decline, a consequence not only of the creeping withdrawal of tariff protection but also changes in customer preference and Australia’s shift to a more city-centric demographic. Holden needed to look beyond Australia’s borders if it was to have a future.

It’s fortunate that the company was being led by Peter Hanenberger as the VE program took shape. The charismatic, crafty and persuasive German was a General Motors lifer who knew the outfit inside out. He also knew Australia well, having spent time here in the late 1970s as a chassis engineer, tasked with making the HZ Holden handle with his ‘Radial Tuned suspension’.

Hanenberger engineered, with the support of GM global product boss Bob Lutz, an international role for the Australian-developed architecture. The platform, codenamed Zeta, would be an export-ready design, and capable of adaption for other models made in other countries – if it hit targets for cost, performance, safety and production flexibility. This was a new kind of pressure for Holden.

Things didn’t go quite as well as planned. Exports to the Us of the Pontiac G8 version of the VE began in 2008, but lasted little more than a year as GM’s mounting troubles led to the American brand being axed. But since 2009 the current Chevrolet Camaro has been built in Canada on a shortened version of Zeta. now exports to the Us of the VE’s direct descendant, the Zeta-based VF, are under way once more. This time badged as a Chevrolet, as it always should have been.

The VE, of course, has its flaws. Heating and air-con system problems afflicted early production. The base V6 engines, both 3.6-litre at launch and the 3.0-litre direct-injection introduced for the 2010 model year, aren’t as smooth or satisfying as they should be. And a four-speed auto was out of place in 2006, even in fleet models like Omega and Berlina.

Even with its acknowledged imperfections, the VE Commodore still deserves its place at the top of our list. For its design, engineering, value and versatility, but also because it’s a greater and much more significant achievement than any other car Australia has ever made. Holden began in 1948 with a basic design imported from America. With VE, the voyage was in the opposite direction. More than just a good honest car, this was the Commodore that proved, beyond doubt, that Australia’s got talent.

VE caught thE attEntion of

riVal dEsignErs for its stancE,

proportions and simplE dEtailing. EVEryonE agrEEd — this was a damn handsomE sEdan

IT’s A GREATER AND MORE sIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENT THAN ANY OTHER CAR AUsTRALIA HAs EVER MADE