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General Motors Holden: Australia’s Ideal Family Car
Title:
General Motors Holden: Australia’s Ideal Family Car
NFSA ID
262814
Year
1957
Courtesy
General Motors Holden
A young family climb into their Holden and drive through the suburbs as the voice-over narration describes the car’s suitability for a family. A close-up of the internal steering mechanism demonstrates the re-circulating ball bearings which make steering smoother. The model’s new features are listed and superimposed over the car – longer wheel base, lower height, wider front track and stabiliser bar. A Holden undergoes steering tests at the Lang Lang proving ground in Victoria. On-screen text reiterates the narration’s emphasis on Holden’s economy, dependability, performance, styling and comfort. The advertisement ends with the slogan 'Holden – Australia’s Own Car’ appearing over the final driving shot.
The opening moments of this clip present Holden as an 'ideal family car’ with a strong appeal to women, who benefit from the smoother, lighter steering and ease of parking. The rise of the suburban postwar family in Australia not only increased the automobile market (in which Holden had the majority stake) but meant that women had greater need for the family car. Everyday shopping trips, such as the one which opens this ad, began to feature in Holden ads to directly appeal to women drivers.
As well as targeting the female market, this ad goes to great lengths to reiterate the key features on which Holden built its reputation – economy, dependability, performance, styling and comfort. Holden advertisements at this time certainly made generalised claims to promote their product but, more often than not, backed them with technical explanations or engineering demonstrations. Here, re-circulating ball bearings are shown in isolation as a car part and then in action with the high angle shot illustrating ease of parking. In case that wasn’t enough, we see the car being test driven at Lang Lang. This method of presenting a thoroughly tested car, tailored and developed to suit the needs of the Australian family, continued to shape Holden ads up until the mid-1960s.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.