Holden Onto Tradition

Understanding Holden’s Legacy

To understand the EFIJY one must first understand Holden. The company was founded in the mid-1800s by James Alexander Holden when he opened a saddlery business in Adelaide, South Australia, so even in its earliest days Holden was all about transportation.

Holden actually merged with GM in 1931 when it was producing automotive bodies and engines, but not complete automobiles. The company began producing fully Australian cars after WWII, when it introduced the Holden 215, a utilitarian four-door sedan with styling that probably most closely resembled the U.S. Buick of the same era, but on a smaller scale. In 1953 the Holden FJ was introduced, and it was the car that defined Holden and put it atop the heap of automotive manufacturers in Australia. The Holden is to Australia what baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet are to the U.S. The car was embraced, raced, rodded and loved by Australians, and as a result it became the most popular car in the country. Songs and even a full feature film made the Holden a big part of ’50s Australiana. The styling could be considered a cross between a 1951 Mercury and a 1953 Plymouth, but it was pure Australian all the way, with a sedan, the ever-popular and iconic Ute and a new panel wagon available.

A Modern Tribute to the FJ Series

This show car is a tribute to the FJ series and takes on the question of “What would an FJ look like in today’s world, with today’s bits and pieces and technology?” The answer is a stunning, pillarless coupe in a deep candy burgundy metallic that seamlessly merges the most modern technology with the elegant shapes of times past. The results illustrate that the early fastback look of the late ’30s and early ’40s is a shape that lends itself well to today’s eye. In fact, this car stops people dead in their tracks at shows. Of course, none of this was done by accident, as the car was built in OEM fashion: first a series of sketches, then a clay model and finally a buck, and then the body was formed from fiberglass, which, of course means that somewhere out there molds exist for this car. We should be so lucky as to order one of these bodies!

Inspiration for Hot Rod Projects

While this brief history of Holden may serve to enlighten you as to the inspiration of this car, what drew us to it were all the great ideas that are well worth stealing for our own hot rod projects. Dare we say that hot rod manufacturers would do well to look this car over for great ideas, too. Ideas such as the beautifully shaped rear taillights that house red and amber LED lights, which enables the same light to glow bright red for brakes and running lights and then change to amber for turn signals. A nice flashback to the ’50s is the single “blue dot” LED in the center of the light. Also worth noting is the ring of amber LED lights surrounding the headlight for a modular-style lighting system that incorporates headlights and turn signals all in one neatly frenched unit.

Blending Vintage and Modern Design

The design team, lead by Chief Designer Richard Ferlazzo, who first sketched the EFIJY in 1989, took the design elements of a 1953 Holden and refined them in all cases, mildly exaggerated them in some, and incorporated modern materials and technology in all. The grille is a fine example; whittled from a large lump of aluminum, the billet piece encompasses the horizontal line of the original grille, but the original lines have now grown into genuine teeth, a tribute to custom car builders and to the Holden FJ all in one great design.

Since Holden didn’t produce a two-door vehicle in the FJ series, there was plenty of room for creativity from the Holden design team. There is some distinct Buick and Cadillac flavor found on the car, and the hardtop design in conjunction with the fastback rear roof and quarter panels give it an elegant and expensive look. We like the way that, rather than simply smoothing everything, the designers left a single hood bead, recalling the vintage days of two-piece hoods. The fact that the windshield is both curved and V-butt transcends the decades of two-piece flat windshields and the futuristic (for 1953) one-piece curved windshield, while polished aluminum trim hints at a windshield frame.

Sleek and Modern Exterior Features

Moving down the side of the car we find large, heavy fenders typical of the early ’50s, but note that the top of the fenders is more curvaceous, with a definite crown, a styling cue that is subtle yet lends a modern feel to the otherwise fat fender. The designers resisted any temptation to incorporate fadeaway front fenders that would have crossed the door and led down to the rear fenders. Instead, the fender comes to a well-defined end with a shapely blister on the leading edge of the door and, in the process, the cabin of the car seems smaller and more sports-like.

The rear fenders are huge teardrop units that share a line with the sweeping decklid, and the rear of the car takes cues from early boattail speedster designs melded neatly with the fastback look of the late ’40s. The results are stunning, as the repeating teardrop shapes of the front and rear fenders combine with the side window shape and the rear decklid to produce a car that even on the show floor has a fluid feeling of motion. The wheels remind us of early Cadillac hubcaps, and they are big billets, with the front measuring 20×9 and the rears 22×10. The windows are all surrounded with aluminum moldings, but you’ll note the moldings are all flush fit perfectly with the body and the glass for a modern ­interpretation.

Interior Design: A Perfect Blend of Old and New

Moving inside the car, we once again experience the perfect mix of old and new, which, by the way, might just be the modern definition of a hot rod. One of the first things to catch our eyes is the digital speedometer, which reads “53” when not in use, a tribute to the first year of the FJ. Now, digital gauges are hardly news, as they’ve been around since the early ’80s, but what caught our eyes was the type font (the letter or number style) used on the gauges. Rather than have the standard, connect-the-dots, techno-geek-style numbers, they are displayed in a pleasing and somewhat traditional-looking font. The tachometer is so intuitive that it doesn’t even use numbers; rather, a band of light travels around the speedometer changing from blue to red when it hits the peak rpm. Because you can see the entire arc of the tachometer, you instantly have a feeling for where you are on the rpm scale, with straight up being about halfway through the powerband.

Other nice touches include hardwood floor inserts with aluminum teardrops to protect the finish, and the teardrop theme continues from the console to the shape of the seatbacks. The heavy speaker grille on the dashboard is reminiscent of a ’50s dash, yet just below it a video screen drops down from what appears to be a glovebox when closed. The steering wheel does an equally admirable job of blending the old and the new, with the top half painted body color in a tribute to the ’50s, while the lower half is contemporary with a leather wrap. The center spokes of the steering wheel are sculpted affairs that defy any era but are just pure Art Deco in design. Large oval pedals continue that Art Deco, over-the-top feeling the interior imparts. In short, the interior is much like the rest of the car—stunning, well-conceived and perfectly executed, a tribute to the talents of all the people at Holden and their partners who contributed parts and material.

Under the Hood: Power and Performance

Underneath the car we find a stretched Corvette chassis, which provides four-wheel independent suspension with all-­aluminum components and the state-of-the-art braking system found on Corvettes. Power comes from an all-aluminum LS2 Corvette engine with a Roots-style supercharger. The combination is good for a whopping 645 horsepower at 6,400 rpm. Ron Harrop, an ex-FJ racer, built the engine. The automatic transmission is controlled by push buttons in the console.

The Future of Holden and Hot Rodding

And so a group of designers from Australia’s most popular automaker came together with a group of suppliers and spent almost 10 years convincing the Holden brass to give the green light, and then another year building this stunning concept car. Just the fact that this car is the centerpiece of a company such as Holden goes a long way toward legitimizing hot rodding in Australia and around the world. We as hot rodders can look, linger and learn from such an expressive design and awesome build quality, and we can always hope against all odds that the molds have not been destroyed.