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Written by Royce Kurmelovs, CNNAdelaide, Australia
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Rock music plays on the radio in Romano Puntin's branch which is blowzy with accoutrement and cars in assorted states of repair. "Welcome to the dream factory," he says, continuing in the doorway, his atramentous assignment shirt arenaceous from the accomplished acrylic particles that are fabricated from sanding old cars.
Puntin is the buyer of All Car Restorations, a father-son operation on the bend of Elizabeth, South Australia, a accessory burghal of Adelaide area the aftermost Holden car will drive off the band this week.
The 63-year-old restorer was in his branch aback account came over the radio in December 2013 that General Motors was catastrophe Australian production, triggering the end of the Australian car industry.
"I don't apperceive who fabricated that accommodation [to abutting it down], or why, but it was wrong," Puntin says. Showing off the old Holden's he's alive on, he can acquaint me the adventure abaft anniversary one. Of the lot, his admired is the 1972 Holden HQ Belmont ute, a crammer analeptic barter he's bare aback to the basic and is in the action of abating to aboriginal condition.
One of the cars restorer Romano Puntin is alive on this much-loved 1963 EJ Holden Premiere. Credit: Royce Kurmelovs for CNN
In the aperture to his branch is an orange 1976 Holden Torana that belongs to a client. It's a ancestors antique that's been anesthetized bottomward from ancestor to son, and from son to grandson who damaged the advanced bonanza in a car accident. Over to one ancillary is a Chevy Stylemaster aerial up on a arbor that was accumulated by Holden in 1947 and in the added allow there's a 1963 EJ Holden Premiere by the aperture with "tru luv" accounting on the authorization plates.
The end of an era
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Ground bankrupt on Elizabeth's Holden bulb in 1958 during a time aback the company, and the country, were attractive to expand. The branch was clearly opened in 1963 by Queen Elizabeth aback she visited the boondocks that bore her name and now, 60 years on, it's closing.
As a company, Holden started out as a saddle maker in 1856 afore it confused into authoritative automobiles in 1908. Eventually it was taken over by General Motors in 1931 who would go on to accomplish the Holden cast a cornerstone of Australian civic character in 1948 aback it produced the aboriginal mass-market, Australian congenital car.
Instantly, the apparatus became a attribute for aggregate a self-reliant, avant-garde Australia capital to be, the end artefact of an industry that could booty an abstraction on cardboard and some raw abstracts and about-face it into a car that came to activity at the end of a assembly line. Among adolescent bodies -- adolescent men in accurate -- who romanticized American beef cars and for whom a car represented abandon of movement in generally abandoned Australian towns and cities, the Holden bound came to be apparent as an addendum of the self.
And the faster and louder the Holden grew, the stronger its disciplinarian felt.
Fairfax Media/Getty Images
As Holden and Ford competed for bazaar ascendancy in the 50s and aboriginal 60s, active one or the added put a actuality on either ancillary of a growing animosity which alveolate the American-made Fords adjoin the Australian-made Holdens, eventually arch to the Holden-Ford antagonism rivalry. All of this fed into a car ability that was so distinct, and so aggressive, that the accidents it resulted in aggressive the aboriginal Mad Max cine franchise.
As the film's Australian administrator George Miller told Cinema Papers in 1979: "The USA has its gun culture, we accept our car culture."
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Puntin came of age in the average of it. His ancestors had migrated out from Trieste, Italy aback he was two to escape the accident of WWII and had activate a home in Adelaide's alive chic western suburbs, below the adumbration of the Woodville Holden car plant.
Romano Puntin. Credit: Royce Kurmelovs for CNN
That plant's gone now, with a big-box accouterments abundance now continuing in its place, but there as a teenager, Puntin watched the aggregation do analysis runs in the bounded streets backward at night. "We'd be bottomward the angle and dent boutique and watch them go by. We acclimated to go, 'woah! what are these things?'," Puntin remembers. "We knew they were Holdens and we knew again these are the new ones advancing out."
Ever aback his claret has roared to the complete of a V8 engine. And like abounding Australians, the Holden car played a role in about every affiliate of his life. His aboriginal car was a 1954 FJ Holden which he adapted to accomplish it louder. His additional was an FB Holden base wagon. Aback Puntin started his alive activity as a console beater 40 years ago, his job was animadversion Holdens aback into appearance afterwards car accidents. This aftermost 15 years, he's been giving them a additional activity as a restorer.
Such is the backbone of adherence to the car, he knows that while assembly is ending, like bags of car branch workers, he won't be out of a job.
Fairfax Media/Getty Images
How the dream soured
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While the actuality of the car industry in Australia has consistently been the focus of abutting discussion, the end began with a absolute storm. The aggregation was bound out of key consign markets and faced angry antagonism from China which produced 18 actor cartage the aforementioned year GM appear it was affairs out. Australia, combined, fabricated 170,808.
Frank Gelber, the arch economist and Administrator of BIS Oxford Economics says that abreast from the affair of subsidization, the accommodation to abutting the branch was fabricated as a absolute aftereffect of the Australian mining boom. "The mining bang wasn't costless," says Gelber. "The acceleration in the Australian dollar during the mining bang fabricated a lot of added industries uncompetitive.
On Sunday, a array of 1,000 Holdens collection through the streets of Elizabeth in accolade and this Friday there is a clandestine affair actuality captivated for the 900 workers still at the factory. With that, the abutting affiliate will activate for the bodies of the arena area the Elizabeth Holden branch operated, and those who collection the cars they made.
Once the branch goes, the architecture assignment will still be done in Australia, but accomplishment will about-face adopted to Germany and the Holden will be brought in on the aback of a ship.
In abounding agency it's the end of an era, Puntin says. It's already adamantine to acquisition genitalia for the aboriginal cars, which agency they accept to accomplish them from scratch. Now some of the newer models are acceptable attenuate and prized. Eventually they too will become collector's items, accessible alone to those who can allow them.
Which is a shame, Puntin thinks.
"It's wrong," he says. "Holden was an icon. Fabricated here. It wasn't an import. It was ours."
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