Happy Birthday FC Holden

[RET]

54 years young today!



Hope yours brings you many more years of motoring pleasure.

[freddyc]

OK I will have a drink to celebrate, with my car of coarse.

[steamman]

  .
I'll go out and hug my FE so that she wont feel left out.
Happy birthday all the FC's out there.

[weddo]

Arrived home just in time (almost - today) to celebrate.

Just sittin up there smilin all the way home - did have a tail wind






Regards

Weddo

[zulu]

Gday Weddo,

Good to see all 3 of you are now back, hopefully the repairs are not to serious, we are looking forward to the next Nats down your way

Cheers, Gary

[RET]

Happy 61st Birthday to the FC Holden

[my8thholden]

You never forget a birthday hey Richard ..Well its birthday time for my old girl ,Engine number L454765 makes it May 1958 ,well it can be 14th May, just happens to be my birthday ,fancy that ..and the casting mark on block D.14.8.  would be 14th April 1958  .that just happens to have been my Mothers birthdate  ..so its memory time for me ..nice nostalgic co-incidence ..Vern ..

[old-blu]

 1958... The year the "GENERAL",really got it right!  Great pity he didn't have a chew in David Hegland's ear in '65.  Kevin.

[Dr_Terry]

What happened in 1965 ?

They were still no. 1 in sales even with the onslaught of Falcon, Valiant, Mini, VW & the Japanese.

May 1965 saw their highest monthly sales figures of all time.

As good as the Holden was in the 50s, they sold well due to the lack of opposition.

Dr Terry

[my8thholden]

Dr Terry . Are you saying the HD set a sales record ?,I didn't know that ,I note you said monthly ,total volume sales of a model was EH first FC second of the 1948 to 1968 production ,in that category the HD was 7th out of the 10 models ..Vern

[Errol62]

I like the HDs. Dads third car after the FX and FC. Alright they could have increased the track but then we wouldn’t be able to bolt up ball joint suspension to the earlier cars. First Holden with a true performance option in the X2 engine upgrade.


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[old-blu]

  To clarify my point [ what happened in 1965?].  This was the year of the release of the HD model, as we all know. Can you imagine yourself stepping out of an EH into an HD? this model may have sold well, however, the HD has become known as the Holden Dreadful, or the Holden Disaster, [in my opinion].  Once the Holden model code had been broken, the decision was made to call this release, the HD, [ the initials of the Manager General, David Hegland  in reverse]. According to the Holden model code, the HD should have been released as the EF.  Looking around the current Car Shows, & in particular, "all Holden Days", restored HD's are pretty thin on the ground when compared to the number of EH's on show.  This is just a personal opinion I have when comparing the general appeal of each model.  For me, the EH is pure "eye candy" when compared to the HD.
   What didn't happen during the design of the HD, [  in my opinion], was the "GENERAL"  not suggesting that the "cheese cutter" front fenders & the plain Dash layout could have been made more appealing]. Very happy to be shot down in flames over this & no offence intended.  Given the choice, I wonder how many would restore an HD over an EH?   As a footnote, this is a case of " to each, their own".  We have a member in our Car Club, collecting & restoring P76's!  

[Errol62]

Aesthetically the EH was a backwards step from EJ and of all the earlys my least favourite. My hand is up for the HD and all the extra rubber you can fit under the guards. I thought HD stood for highly dangerous and hr hastily rectified but once again I prefer the cheese cutter front to the squared off hr guards. Also the tail lights which they went back to for the HT. Mostly though I think it is their relative scarcity and the fact dad had one that I like most. Each to their own as you say and this has got to the point of needing a separate thread.


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[ardiesse]

(puts hand up)
I restored an HD (actually, two of them) instead of an EH.  I always thought of it as an HR with a black dash and pointier front-end styling.

Rob

[fcee]

I under stood the hd prefix meant highly disappointing ,but having said that a friend of mine owns a mint ground up restored hd auto ,and it is a gem .

[Errol62]

Local AMHCC member owns this.
Original paint. Apparently the previous and first owner was foreman of the paint shop at Woodville in 65 and it went down the line seven times.
I’d be ditching those HQ mirrors though.


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[my8thholden]

I love a debate about which model is most liked or disliked ,I was interested in the historic factual sales results of the era ..model, colour, trim is all personal choise ,and that's a good thing or we would all be in the same car ,I love the FC ,for some good reasons and some I cant explain ,I just do !!!
If you lined up all the Holden models and said to me choose the one you like it would be a FC then an EH  ..Having said that as I stated on this forum somewhere else ,my Mum had a HD Premier X2 ,3 speed manual .Light metallic green ,I think a beige vinyl roof ,and buckskin bucket seats...I was in my teens ,I loved that car and was the most luxurious car we had up till then ,as a boy Mum had a Grey Austin A40 ,then a White/blue FC ,then the HD ..cheers gents  Vern

[Dr_Terry]

Dr Terry . Are you saying the HD set a sales record ?,I didn't know that ,I note you said monthly ,total volume sales of a model was EH first FC second of the 1948 to 1968 production ,in that category the HD was 7th out of the 10 models ..Vern

I love a good debate about which model series is 'better' or 'more popular'. I wrote an article for our club magazine a few years ago on this very topic. I'll reprint it here because it is so relevant.

It is interesting to break down the figures into sales per month, to see which was in fact the most popular Holden series. As you can see gross sales are irrelevant if the car was on sale for a longer or shorter period of time.

I did some figures recently on average sales per month for FE to HZ. To achieve these numbers, I simply divided the total sales for that model series by the number of months it was on sale. Some of the numbers are surprising but there are several anomalies.  (pm = per month)

FE - 7,388 pm
FC - 9,586 pm
FB - 10,921 pm
EK - 10,014 pm
EJ - 11,908 pm
EH - 14,275 pm
HD - 12,780 pm
HR - 11,737 pm
HK - 12,440 pm
HT - 13,100 pm
HG - 12,984 pm
HQ - 12,452 pm
HJ - 8,390 pm
HX - 7,377 pm
HZ - 5,315 pm

These figures are distorted slightly by the fact that in some model series, utes & vans ran into the next model by a few months, most notably FJ into FE (~9 months), EK into EJ (5 months), EH into HD (5 months), HR into HK (1 month) & HG into HQ (4 months). Also I counted whole months, rounded off to the closest number. If I had counted weeks it would’ve been more accurate.

What I find most interesting is that the supposedly unpopular HD easily outsold, not only HR but also EJ & HK. The myth that the HD was unpopular, was established in the 70s & 80s by motoring journalists with very keen hindsight. If you had read the various motoring reviews (magazines & newspapers) of the time, you would notice that it was no less popular than any later model series. Other than criticism by a select few, related to the pointy front guards, most reviewers liked its modern styling, roomy interior & the performance of both the Powerglide & the X2 engine. They whinged about the brakes, which they had been doing for decades (& rightly so). However this was tempered by the fact that they were no worse than the oppositions' brakes & they also knew that the front discs were imminent. The plain fact is, that the HD was not unpopular in its day & buyers were not eagerly awaiting its replacement, the HR series.

The best period of sales for GM-H was during the mid 60s, in fact the highest grossing sales month in the company’s history was May 1965 when the Aust. economy was going gangbusters, the HD was selling up a storm & the EH utes & vans were in run-out. The relatively low FE/FC sales numbers were due to slow economic times, but even at these figures, Holden commanded 45-50% of the total vehicle market. FB & EK sales had plateaued due to the 1960 'credit squeeze'. HR saw the first strong competition from Ford & Chrysler (XR Falcon & VC Valiant) & was also on the market for too long. HG onwards would have been eroded due to Holden’s own Torana models, which gradually ate into the larger cars‘ sales figures. By 1975 they also had Gemini & by 1978 they had added Commodore.


Another misconception was that HR stood for 'Hurriedly Redesigned' or 'Hurriedly Rectified' apparently because the HD was "SO bad". There is nothing further from the truth.

The entire HR design, including all tooling & panels were signed off for production in mid 1964, over 6 months BEFORE the HD went on sale !!

Dr Terry

[old-blu]

 Well done Dr Terry.   The first EH I saw was @ Manly beach, Dec 1963. The bonnet was up with people lined up 3 deep around it gazing @ a red motor for the 1st time.  With Holden having such a "lions share" of the market, it was very prestigious to be the first in your street with the "new Model Holden".  Similar to pushing the latest model Victa on the lawn out front.  For you younger ones, You could purchase a new building block in Baulkham Hills Sydney, for the same price as an EH!. That same block today would cost you $1M, that's if you could find one!  At 23 yrs of age, all I could do was drool, knowing there was no hope of affording one on a Teacher's wage.  when I decided to start restoring early Holdens , I settled on the FC, because, as a teenager, I was @ the release of that model. At the moment I have rediscovered the pleasure of driving my FE ute, recently to Tenterfield & surrounds. All model Holdens have much appeal to people of my vintage, because they were the epitome of Australian Motoring as they grew up..... "here endeth the lesson".

[RET]

Great article, Terry. Thanks for sharing it.

cheers
RET