Michael Masin

Most people would agree that the Mazda MX-5 is one of the greatest cars ever made. By taking small British roadster theme and applying the radical concept of building it properly, Mazda created an icon that a handful of companies have tried to take on over the past 30 years. It’s earliest opponent came from an unlikely source: Ford Australia. .

In 1968 GM Holden elected to consolidate the number of brands it offered. Vauxhall, Chevrolet and Pontiac were dropped, leaving only Holden. The sales-proof Chevys and Pontiacs were replaced by V8 versions of the new HK Holden and the Vauxhall Viva was re-branded as the Holden Torana

You’re not imagining things, the car in the photo above is an HJ Holden Premier with a Mazda badge and Japanese fender-mounted wing mirrors. But what was a big Holden doing in small car-friendly and import-hostile Japan?

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was no shortage of startup supercar manufacturers. Pagani, Koenigsegg, Noble and Ascari are some of the more widely recognised examples. One you might not be familiar with is Joss. Joss Developments was a company with the rather bold ambition of becoming the first fully-fledged supercar manufacturer from Australia. Prior to the Joss, the closest thing Australia had to a production supercar was the Giocattolo Group B, a mid-engined widebody Alfa Romeo Sprint with an Alfa V6 that later made way for an HSV V8.

In 1967, Canadian-born Allan Moffat sought a replacement for the Ford Cortina he’d been in the Australian Touring Car Championship. With the introduction of V8 Holden Monaros, Chevrolet Camaros and Ford Mustangs, it wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Moffat travelled to Detroit, seeking a replacement and achieved the impossible. He was given one of only seven Mustang Boss 302 Trans racers, free of charge. Moffat’s Trans-Am Mustang was the fastest car to compete in Group C improved production touring cars, although he never managed to win a championship with it.

Ralph Sarich first rose to fame in 1972 off the back of his “revolutionary” Sarich orbital engine. The orbital was not unlike a rotary. It featured a single prismatic rotary “piston” orbiting but not rotating around the central axis with at least five combustion chambers separated by reciprocating steel vanes. It sounds complicated, but it had a number of advantages.

The name Peter Brock is synonymous with Holden. All of his record nine Bathurst 1000 victories were achieved in Toranas and Commodores. His three championships were also won in Holdens.

The arrival of the Mini in 1959 decimated Australia’s microcar industry. For AU£725 you could now get a proper car with a steel body and an 850cc four-cylinder engine. To put that into perspective, a fibreglass, doorless, Goggomobil Dart cost £685. Goggomobil was the only microcar manufacturer in Australia to turn a profit in the 1950s, but even they couldn’t survive the Mini.

By the mid-1980s, Australia’s motoring history was already littered with ambitious attempts at home-grown sports cars and supercars. Very few of them made it to production, even fewer achieved commercial success. Purvis, Bolwell, Buckle, and Illinga are some of the more recognised names.

This year’s Bathurst 1000 is the 25th anniversary of the extremely controversial 1992 race. It was the year Gibson Motorsport’s Mark Skaife and Jim Richards won in an AWD Nissan GTR with the help of a coincidentally well-timed red flag. The GTR was already unpopular in the Australian Touring Car Championship.

Toyota Australia’s Altona production facility will close on Tuesday, bringing to an end 54 years of Toyota manufacturing in Australia. That represents roughly two-thirds of Toyota’s existence. Toyota has never been the biggest car manufacturer in Australia, but they have been very successful and outlived every other Australian carmaker bar Holden.

For over 60 years, large family sedans were the most popular cars in Australia. From 1948 to 59, Holden had the market all to itself. Then Ford and Chrysler waded in with the Falcon and Valiant in 1960 and 62 and took a significant slice of Holden sales. This encouraged Leyland, who, after numerous half-arsed adaptations of smaller British models went all-in with the P76 and lost. When Chrysler became Mitsubishi, the ageing Valiant made way for the innovative wide-body medium Magna. It seemed like no one would try to mount a direct assault on the Falcon/Commodore duopoly again.