Ask anyone who grew up in Australia in the ’60s or ’70s what car was in the driveway and you won’t just get a brand name. You’ll get a loyalty. Holden or Ford was never really a question about cars – it was about which side of the fence your family stood on, and most of us have never climbed back over.
With the Bathurst 1000 now in the rear view mirror – and the first Great Race since Allan Moffat passed away last November, aged 86 – we want to know: which side were you on?
The rivalry that ran on Sundays
For decades, Mount Panorama was where the argument at the barbecue was settled – for twelve months, anyway.
On the red side stood Peter Brock. “Peter Perfect”, the King of the Mountain, won the Great Race nine times between 1972 and 1987, every one of them in a Holden, and somehow made it look as easy as a Sunday drive. When he was killed in a rally crash in Western Australia in 2006, the country mourned him like family.
On the blue side was Moffat – the quiet, precise Canadian-born racer who won Bathurst four times in Falcons. His most famous win came in 1977, when he and Colin Bond brought their two Falcons home first and second in a planned “formation finish”, with the team waving a “Form Finish 1-2” sign from pit wall. Bond poked his nose ahead into the final corner before dutifully tucking in behind. Ford fans still talk about that photo. Holden fans still pretend they’ve never seen it.
And then there was Dick Johnson, who kept the blue flag flying with wins in 1981, 1989 and 1994 – including that famous XD Falcon victory after a rock ended his race the year before.
The cars in our driveways
The rivalry wasn’t just on the track. It was parked out the front of almost every house in the country.
Holden’s HQ range, built from 1971 to 1974, was the best-selling Holden of all time – more than 485,000 of them, from the humble Kingswood sedan to the Premier, the Monaro, the ute and the wagon that carried a generation of kids to the beach. “Football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars” went the 1976 jingle, and for a lot of us it wasn’t advertising – it was a description of Saturday.
Ford answered with the Falcon, and in 1971 with the XY Falcon GT-HO Phase III, a four-door family sedan that was touted as the fastest of its kind in the world. Whether it truly was has been argued about ever since – which is about as Holden-versus-Ford as an argument gets.
The end of an era
The driveway rivalry ended quietly. The last Australian-built Falcon rolled out of Broadmeadows on 7 October 2016. The last Commodore left Elizabeth in South Australia a year later, on 20 October 2017. In February 2020 General Motors announced the Holden brand itself would be retired.
Even on the Mountain, the old names have changed. The Commodore has been replaced on the grid by the Chevrolet Camaro, which now battles the Ford Mustang. But walk through the crowd at Bathurst this weekend and you’ll still see the old colours. Some loyalties outlast the factories that built them.
Now it’s your turn
So, which were you – Holden or Ford? What did your dad drive, what was your first car, and whose poster was on your bedroom wall: Brock or Moffat? If you have a photo of the old family car, email your story and a picture or two to yourstory@oversixty.com.au. We’ll share the best of them – in your words.
