(first posted 3/2/2018) I can’t emphasize how rare it is to see one of the first 48-215 model Holdens parked on the side of the road, so it was a very nice surprise when I saw the scene above after turning into a quiet suburban street one day on a snap detour. 99,244 of the sedans were originally built, but the newest ones are now 65 years old so it is no coincidence that most have retired!
Source: National Museum of Australia.
The official name “48-215” came from the car’s introduction in 1948 and the engine capacity of 2.15 litres, or 132 cubic inches. Prime Minister Ben Chifley launched the car on 29 November 1948, and the car went on sale in late February the following year. So while the Holden is listed as a 1948 model, the fact is that very few cars were actually built in 1948. 68 were built prior to the launch and sent to the various capital cities for the event, while just 163 engines were built in 1948; the number of cars built will be somewhere between these figures.
Apart from simple age and the fact that most surviving cars are treasured family heirlooms, there are other reasons why the 48-215 is so rarely seen today. The front suspension was redesigned in 1953, replacing lever-action dampers with telescopic and eliminating a source of trouble from the original car.
The iconic front grille was more costly to produce than its FJ replacement, being made up of a number of cast-alloy pieces, and would have been a source of dilapidation as pieces fell off.
The photo above isn’t the greatest, but is the only Curbside sighting of an FJ that I have photographed. The grille would have originally been chromed of course; likewise the bumper has been left off.
This is the 48-215 grille badge, which is an impressive piece of sculpture in itself. There were 169,969 FJs built compared with 120,402 48-215 sedans and 50-2016 utes of the original model, so weight of numbers favours the FJ’s survival too.
Even the simplicity of the first car probably worked against it, with just a single tail/brake light at the rear. If you were buying a car in later years it would have been a factor to choose an FJ instead. Even the highly original 48-215 seen here at the Winton historic races has had a pair of reflectors added to improve rear visibility at night. Note that the turn signals on the green FJ are aftermarket too.
Since the late-1960s there has been an increased appreciation of history in Australia, and the first car club specifically covering the 48-215 and FJ Holdens seems to have been formed in 1970. Although it was set in the current day rather than being a nostalgia movie like American Graffiti, no doubt the 1977 movie “The F.J. Holden” reminded people of the cars; and even then the producers found it difficult to obtain suitable cars for filming.
I mentioned that coming across this car was a chance encounter; it was while looping back to get a shot of this WB Statesman. By comparison with the 48-215 these WB’s are a dime a dozen, but even they are a fairly uncommon sight. Sometimes things happen for a reason I suppose, who knows when the next time will be that I see a 48-215 on the street?
Further Reading:
Cohort Sighting: 1953 Holden FJ Ute – In Memoriam – Curbside Classic
Peak Hour Outtakes: Classic Utes On Brisbane Routes (William Stopford’s sighting of an FJ ute)
Car Show Classic: 2017 Motorclassica – A Hall Of Holden History
Curbside Classic: 1980-85 Statesman WB by General Motors-Holden What A Beaut
About the time this car was introduced the single brake light had disappeared from new cars here in “the states”.
I have no idea when turn signals became standard equipment on our cars, but I do remember my Mom driving a 49 Plymouth that had had the turn signal activation…mechanism (?) added to it after it had built.
I don’t know, but to my eyes the FJ looks similar, just barely, to an early 50s Chevy. And those are getting hard to find, too.
You are doing better than I am, I only seem to run into interesting cars when I don’t have my smartphone.
Unless I’m mistaken a federal law that took effect on 1 January 1956 required all cars sold in the U.S. to have turn signals. Before that date they would have been optional equipment, especially on the lower priced brands, they may well have been standard on higher end cars. I remember a 1954 Chevrolet that belonged to my aunt as not having turn signals. This law may have only applied to passenger vehicles; I can vaguely remember being in pickup trucks from the late fifties that didn’t have turn signals. Of course that was a good number of years ago so I could be mistaken.
There was no legal framework or mechanism for Federal/national vehicle equipment requirements before 1968. Prior to that date there were occasional efforts at uniform requirements; these bubbled up from the state level and were coordinated through the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (which went through some name changes over the years) in dialogue with the Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ditto). Examples include the single 7-inch round sealed beam headlamp for all 1940 vehicles, the allowance of the double 5.75″-round sealed beam headlamp system in some states for ’57 and all states for ’58, seat belt anchorages for all four outboard seating positions for ’62, and the amber front turn signal for ’63. There may have been a state-by-state/coordinated effort to bring in electric turn signals for ’56 or some other year; I don’t know offhand and my quick perusal of the usual sources for such info reveals no evidence of such.
Things began to heat up on this front after Ralph Nader’s book (“Unsafe at Any Speed”) came out. Pending the setup of the three agencies that would eventually be consolidated to form NHTSA, and their promulgation of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards which first took effect on 1/1/68, the General Services Administration drew up their own list of standard equipment required on cars purchased by the government effective with 1966 models. The list included front and rear seatbelts, nonglare windshield wiper arms, windshield washers, a driver’s sideview mirror, reversing lamps, and automatic transmission controls with no forward and reverse position immediately adjacent. The GSA requirements had the effect of making those items standard equipment even for cars not bought by the government (automakers weren’t about to make government and non-government versions of their cars), which is why things like backup lights and sideview mirrors and screenwashers moved off many models’ option list for ’66 and became basic equipment.
I don’t know when such things became uniform here (judged on cars from memory and now, about the mid-sixties). My friend has an original 1952 48-215, and that central light isn’t even a brake light. It’s a tailight that you walk round and switch on at the light itself. No indicators, reflectors, brake lights.
I should add that with no belts and no godamn brakes to speak of, it’s a bum-puckering thing to drive in traffic!
I’ve heard that ‘walk around and switch on’ thing was only required in Victoria, cars from other states may not have it. It’s been explained to me that the idea was so that you could see whether your tail light was working. I’m not sure when reflectors became a legal requirement, but I’ve seen 48s (and other cars of this era) with them in a variety of positions.
Agreed Dan, very similar to those Chevs
I’ve always wondered whether the original Holden was created in the American styling studios. It sure looks like a discarded idea for a small Buick.
The whole car was designed, developed and engineered in the US. It was one of two small-car concepts that Chevrolet very seriously considered building after the war, the other was the Cadet. When it was determined that these 7/8 scale Chevrolets cost almost as much to build as the full-size one, the whole project was sent to Australia. At this time Holden did not have the facilities to style, design, engineer and tool for a new car. Its capabilities developed over the years.
The prototypes were registered as Buicks, the engine is a clone of a 2.2 Vauxhall six, the styling was all done stateside.
Which was a convenient coincidence really, because GM was quite reluctant to build a car in Australia, as opposed to assembling cars with local bodies. The head of Holden had been working on it since the late 1930’s, but it was only a government ROI (effectively) in the latter stages of WW2 which included access to finance that made it happen.
The Holden was the Goldilocks car that hit a sweet spot of size, performance and fuel economy between the existing British and American cars of the time.
The Holden was the Goldilocks car that hit a sweet spot of size, performance and fuel economy between the existing British and American cars of the time.
As has been probably the case with every Australian designed car ever since. The late Commodore and Falcon are good examples. Park one besides a 300C and you’ll see why.
All the Aussie contributors in here will know the iconic band Daddy Cool and thier anthem Eagle Rock. For those of you who have never heard or seen this band, just go on youtube and search for it. A black and white music video will educate you, and an FJ is one of the stars of the clip. If you have a soul, you will love it. Trust me on this. Cheers.
I’d be MORE shocked at seeing one parked along a US street…..
Thanks, Jimmy !
Is it interesting that John’s side view of the car shows a front fender that, because of a trick of light, just might be next-generation slab-side styling ? And is it fitting that the car, styled in America for Australia, should have a British flavor — something like a cross between a Morris Minor and an MG Magnette, say — American-influenced immediate-postwar English sedans ?
Front fender treatment is very like the ’41 Olds, the way it blends into the bodywork without carrying the fender through into the door.
It always seemed odd to me that here in Australia we got these when over in England, Vauxhall had cars much the same size with the same size engine, and Holden were already building those. Then Holden comes out with these in competition – perhaps a bit bigger than the Velox, slightly roomier, a bit more powerful, much the same era stylingwise and also prewar in engineering.
These days the beancounters would tell Holden to just build the Vauxhall.
But these were billed as the first really Australian car Old Pete. Never mind that they were scaled down Chevrolets, that made no difference, this was a car that was built for conditions over here, manufactured here, owned by us all. A car that finally threw off the yoke that England held over us, a six that you could bung into top gear and then leave it there all day. Most affordable English cars were wheezy little fours that had trouble getting out of their own way, but here was a six seater with a decent bit of torque and three on the tree. The Vauxhalls were not particularly bad cars, but they were not perceived as being truly Australian. The rest is history.
It is definitely an interesting “what if”. The Vauxhall Velox 6-cylinder was just the 4-cyl car with a slightly longer nose (unless I’m mistaken) so smaller to start with and thus not a 6 seater. It would have been a generation or nearly so older in its basic design too, which is probably evident in having the same weight as the Holden despite the smaller size.
These days the Opel Astra and Chevrolet Cruze coexist, or at least the previous generation of each had the full range of body styles (hatch, sedan and wagon), I don’t think the current ones do.
The first post-war Vauxhall was the immediate pre-war ’10hp’ reworked to become the L series Wyvern and Velox. The 48-215 stylistically fits between that and the 1951 E series. Of course Holden carried on producing uniquely Australian Vauxhalls like the Caleche and Ute for some time.
Oh I totally agree, Jimmy. It’s only through reading Don Loffler’s early Holden books that I’ve come to realize what a great thing the ’48 was for Australlia – I was still another nine years away….
Since they were designed in Detroit, I wonder why they followed the British tradition of microscopic taillights that only illuminated the inside of the bumper. All American cars had large enough taillights at a rational height by then, so it would have been cheaper to reuse tooling for the Chevy “gas pedal” lights.
Early Holdens only had the one tail light most British cars by that time had two reflector tape was a requirement for NZ roadworthies on most cars back then as factiry reflectors didnt, Holdens of this era are quite agricultural.
215 was actually the code for standard Holden sedans for more than a decade it had nothing to do with size or engine size.
@ Peter Wilding
Peter that mandated little switch to activate the rear lighting was placed on the r/h/s of the bodywork above the rear bumper, and the principal reasoning behind it was to negate the possibility of a night-time ‘hit and run’ driver switching off their lighting – including to the rear number-plate – and thus avoiding identification and/or becoming ‘invisible’.
Those Holden ‘earlys’ aka Humpys (in affectionate reference to their somewhat antiquated styling) were quite sprightly performers in their day. For perspective to our foreign friends, when an exported example of the also-pictured FJ model was tested by the UK Autocar magazine, its smallish OHV-6 combined with a kerb weight of just over a ton gave performance slightly above an also-tested ‘53 Chevrolet Powerglide. Fuel economy of 30 mpg (imperial) was easily achievable.
These old Holdens were raced, rallied, and modified ‘with gay abandon’ and were still everywhere right through to the 1970s and beyond.
Here pictured (hopefully!) is a smooth example of the later-series deluxe variant, the FJ Special.
Here we go!
Queensland had the external tail light switch too. I’ve seen it on Beetles and an uncle’s Riley.
I’d been told wrong then. An older guy told me fifty years ago so I’d assumed he was right.