That’s my daring call, and I’m sticking with it. As a child, I was transfixed by this beautiful new Holden with not a line out of place and a television advertising campaign extolling its ‘Jet Smooth Ride’. What 7 year old boy wouldn’t have wanted that? We couldn’t afford to go on a jet – certainly not on one of those exciting new 4 engined ones with a hump on the cockpit that flew over our home on their way to London. But we might have afforded a HQ, had Mum and Dad not purchased a new car 3 years prior.
As it turns out, brother Paul subscribed to the HQ ownership story, along with a school friend Dave. I belted its successor, a company-owned WB ute, around the back blocks of Osborne Park as a 17 year old deciding to teach himself about valve bounce. Lovely. But I never owned one. I never even drove one until a mate in the banking industry met up with me for a coffee and HQ drive only 5 years ago.
This was the ageless Linda Evangelista or Brad Pitt of car designs, and it was proudly Australian. These wonderfully corny tv ads and brochure shots take me back, feeling a touch of sadness for the cleverness we’ve lost as a nation who could design and make things.
