1959 Holden FC Special: A Fabulously Finned Australian Take on the Tri-Five Chevy

Motor Trend

5 days ago

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of MotorTrend Classic
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Americans lost sight of a basic economic truth recently: Countries that aspire to our level of prosperity want to build things, and they mostly like to build automobiles. Today, it's China and India. After World War II, it was an English-speaking country with the reputation for a scrappy free spirit and a Wild West, much like America's, that yearned for its own auto industry.
From that country came the Holden, 'Australia's Own Car.'
James Alexander Holden established his leather and saddle company in 1856, later branching out with a partner to horse-drawn carriages, and, in the early 1900s, to building car bodies for other manufacturers. Holden was an exclusive body builder for General Motors by 1924, and in 1931 became a GM subsidiary, assembling its American models until the war. The Fisherman's Bend plant in Port Melbourne, Victoria, was a wartime producer for Aussie and Yankee forces during World War II, then converted back to car production.
Australia's Own Car came off the line November 29, 1948. The Holden 48/215, or FX, was based on a 1940 design for a downsized Chevrolet sedan with a four-cylinder engine. Holden used an overhead-valve straight-six with aluminum pistons. Called the Grey Motor for its block paint, it was rated 21.6 horsepower in the FX and FJ.
'Nice little motor,' Mark Reuss says. 'It's a Chevrolet inline-six. They made it their own kind of thing.' He was president and managing director of Holden Limited from February 2008 to July 2009, and brought his '59 Holden FC Special home when he returned to his native Michigan, where he's now GM's North American president and ranking car guy.
Gas prices in the '50s were a bit higher than our 30-40¢ per gallon, but well below British prices. Considering Australia's wide-open spaces, why didn't Holden build American-size land yachts? Cars in Australia always have been less affordable, relative to incomes, than in America, so to ensure healthy market share Holden's 1950s and '60s models were Opel/Vauxhall-sized even when they mimicked Chevrolet styling.
Replacement models and face-lifts generally were more frequent than on Western European or Japanese models, though. Holden replaced the FX with the 1953-56 FJ. Next came the FE for 1956-58 (they were identified by calendar years, as the model year is Alfred P. Sloan's peculiarly North American invention). This set the basis for the FC face-lift. Holden gave the FE's Grey Motor larger valves and better porting and increased the compression ratio to 6.8:1. This more than tripled the horsepower rating to 70. Torque was now 110 pound-feet.
Holden accounted for more than half the Australian market while competing with English brands, European and American Ford designs, and Toyotas. Australian Chryslers were based on '53 Plymouths, snatching just 5-percent market share. Soon, Australians were ready for fancier cars. While it's a classic look now, in the rapidly changing '50s, the Australians could not keep up with Detroit's latest. (By the time Reuss' '59 Special was built, Chevrolet had moved on to the longer, lower, wider 'batwing' Impala.)
'It is almost 22 months since we introduced a completely new Holden, and we believe the time is now right for further appearance changes,' E.C. Daum, managing director for General Motors-Holden's Limited, said in a May 6, 1958, press release.
Holden had introduced a wagon version of the FE in 1957, so the FC launched in the Southern Hemisphere's autumn of 1958 came in four body styles: four-door sedan, four-door 'station sedan' (wagon), a two-door panel truck, and a two-door El Camino-like 'ute' pickup.
The face-lift and especially the top Special trim level contribute to the shrunken 1955 Chevy look. Two-tone paint bleeds from the top into the trunklid and rear quarter-panels, with horizontal chrome trim creating the illusion of a longer, lower, wider car than the FE. The Special's chrome headlamp hoods and widened radiator grille ape the look of a '55 Chevy, as do the smaller horizontal lights below. The Special came with a new 'flashing light' system, which via a lever on the steering wheel column 'warns motorists in front and behind when you intend turning to the right or left'—turn signals.
The Special also included a chrome license-plate frame, stainless-steel window and windshield moldings, and roof gutters. It came with rugged and elegant Elascofab seat fabric, front-door armrests, rear coat hooks and assist straps, and switches that activated the dome light when front doors opened.
The FC Business Sedan, with its PVC upholstery, heavy-duty battery, and chrome handle on the back of the front seat, was designed for taxicab, fleet, and other commercial use, and was devoid of the other Special features. The FC Standard Sedan tossed out the chrome seat handle and HD battery.
Reuss' 1959 Holden gives up plenty of '55 Chevy-style body roll in the turns, though there's little plow, and understeer is kept in check. Driving it makes you think of those black-and-white archive films showing a European sedan chasing tiny sports cars around a road or rally circuit. For an American-style family sedan, it's a good handler, with lots of suspension travel for Australia's rough roads and rougher outback. The car pulls strongly to 70 or 75 mph, but not much more, Reuss says, as it's ready to handle Aussie predelictions for camping trailers. The manual-only steering takes stereotypically manly Australian arms to wheel at low speeds. The heavy clutch pedal feels like it came from a late-'90s GM F-car. Those 70 horses feel pretty big, and one Australian website lists the Special's curb weight at 2412 pounds, which undercuts a '55 Chevy sedan by some 750 pounds. The six is plenty of engine, even with the slow, deliberate shifts the three-on-the-tree requires of your left hand. Top speed is 81 mph in third, according to a January 1957 Motor Trend drive of the mechanically identical FE.
The Elascofab seats and lightly chromed interior are more cheerful than a stark British or dour German interior of the time, though far more sober than in contemporary American cars. The curvy hood gives you the same sort of view you'd get from behind the wheel of the older Chevrolet, except that the Holden's hood stops at a rational point, while the Bel Air's goes on forever (the '55 Bel Air is 19.7 inches longer than the FC). The FC proved immensely popular. With 191,724 built from May 1958 to December 1959, it outsold the FE by 36,563 units.
The FC gave way to the FB of '60-'61. The six was increased to 138 cubic inches, but the heavier body style, which had a bit of '56 and '57 Chevy styling, more than offset the five extra horses. Holden released the FB just two weeks before Ford launched its XK Falcon, based heavily on the '60 American Falcon. Though the XK Falcon proved unreliable and failed to threaten its rival, Holden continued aggressive updating, adding its first hydramatic transmission on the '61-'62 EK face-lift. The '62-'63 EJ was lower and wider, if not longer, and featured more than a hint of '61 Chevy Impala styling, especially in the nose and profile treatment. New Red Motors launched with the '63-'65 EH face-lift, a 115-horsepower, 179-cubic-inch six and a 95-horsepower, 149-cubic-inch version.
Holden introduced the cleaner '65-'66 HD with a lot of '64 Chevelle in its look, but it suffered the same sort of reliability problems as the first Aussie Falcon, just as Ford introduced the more reliable XR Falcon. HD became known as 'Holden's Disaster' for jeopardizing the company's dominant market share. After that car, Holden design grew closer to Opel's. With gas prices still closer to America's than Great Britain's, Holden used sixes and even V-8s instead of fours. Design similarity long gone, Australia's Own Car had firmly established a local auto industry, and by 1980 Holden celebrated this with television commercials that parodied a wildly successful Chevrolet ad campaign: 'Football, meat pies, kangaroos, and Holden cars.'
Ask The Man Who Owns One
Mark Reuss is General Motor's North American president. He began his career at GM as an engineer, earning an MBA along the way. He ran Holden in 2008 and '09 and directed its restructuring. While he was stationed in Australia, he bought and sold a Holden FX, then found this 'survivor' FC Special.
Why I Like It: 'I thought, if I get it back here, people will think it's a '55 Chevy. Then they do a double take and see me driving on the right side.'
Why It's Collectible: 'It's a really cool part of the history. It's got a lot of the history of our high-volume Chevys.'
Restoring/Maintaining: Because of the similar design, restoring an FC Holden Special is like restoring a '55-'56 Chevy sedan, says Geoffrey Klimpsch, of the FE-FC Holden Car Clubs of Australia. 'Many mechanical, electrical, body parts and accessories are identical or interchangeable, as most were U.S. sourced.' Rare Spares of Australia has sold parts and equipment for restoring and customizing early Holdens since the 1970s, adds Richard Thomas, vice president of the FE-FC Holden Car Club of New South Wales. Klimpsch recommends oil changes every 1000 miles, plus regular greasing of the independent front suspension.
Beware: While it looks like a vintage Chevy, the FC Holden has unibody construction, so rust-prone areas are that much more problematic.
Expect To Pay: Concours-ready: $20,000, Solid driver: $9,000, Tired runner: $3,000
(all Australian dollars, estimates based on survey of cars for sale online; 1 AUD = .995 USD).
Join The Clubs: Holden Car Clubs of Australia, www.holden.org.au, FE-FC Holden Car Clubs of Australia, fefcholden.org.au
Our Take
Then: 'Handling is where it comes into its own. The ride is soft and comfortable, and the rear end no longer shows a tendency to break loose on fast cornering. The rear suspension is more firm; the car now stays flatter in a turn, with a desirable slight understeer characteristic becoming apparent during high speed maneuvering. It all adds up to a car built especially for and most suited to Australian conditions.'—Bert Martin, Motor Trend, January 1957
Now: A big hit in Australia and obscure here, except for its '55 Chevy styling. It's a great example of what GM North America should have done in the 1950s to move to the forefront of small cars with good chassis development.