SA: Holden won't bid for its first prototype

AAP General News (Australia)
08-15-2001
SA: Holden won't bid for its first prototype

By Tim Dornin, National Motoring Correspondent

ADELAIDE, Aug 15 AAP - Car producer Holden will not bid for a $450,000 prototype version
of its first production car which will be auctioned over the internet next month.

The company said today it had no interest in the car and regarded the first production
model, the 48-215, the first true Holden.

"Prototypes are produced all the time and are never kept," Holden's director of public
affairs John Morrison said.

"As far as we are concerned there is only one number one and that's the car that (then
prime minister) Ben Chifley launched and sat in.

"That's the car that is part of the history of Holden."

Mr Morrison said the owners of the prototype deserved credit for doing an excellent
restoration job.

But he questioned the suggestion the car was worth $350,000 and could fetch as much
as $450,000 when auctioned by online trading marketplace eBay in September.

On that basis the first production Holden, still owned by the company, could fetch
much more but Mr Morrison said as far as Holden was concerned the 48-215 was priceless
and would never be sold.

The prototype car, the first of five built by Holden, will be listed by eBay on September
13 after being shown in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

It has been in private hands since 1952, originally sold by Holden to Arthur Ling,
the general foreman of the company's experimental panel shop.

For 41 years it was owned by Des Kelly, a Holden dealer in Morwell, but was bought
by its current, unnamed owner in 1999.

Completed in August 1946 and finished in a deep blue, it was not registered until February
12, 1947 and even then as a Chevrolet.

The registration card was later changed to read Holden after the name had been picked
and the local badging produced.

Mr Morrison conceded the car was unusual in that unlike most other prototypes it was
not destroyed once production began.

But he said it was no more significant than prototype versions of other models including
the Commodore coupe, due to be launched by the company later this year.

AAP tjd/vr

KEYWORD: MOTOR PROTOTYPE

2001 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.