Adelaide

The Holden story begins in the 1850s when James Alexander Holden left England and subsequently established a leather goods and saddlery business in King William Street in the centre of Adelaide. He could not have imagined the extent to which his family name would become so attached to an Australian icon almost 100 years later when the first Holden car rolled off the production line in 1948.

In 1874 James Alexander Holden partnered with Henry Frost in J.A. Holden & Co. Frost had a saddlery business in Port Wakefield and was skilled in metalwork and upholstery. J.A. Holden & Co. could now expand into carriage repair and production. James’s son, Henry, became a partner a few years later.

In 1885 Henry Holden and Henry Frost formed Holden & Frost. The business grew during the Boer War when they supplied leather goods and saddles to the soldiers.

In 1910 Holden & Frost began trimming imported motor bodies and by 1916 they were building sidecars for motorcycles.

During World War I, import restrictions meant enough completed car bodies could not be shipped into Australia. This provided an opportunity for Holden’s Motor Body Builders which was established in 1917. They built bodies for Ford and Dodge in the first instance.

By 1919 the now registered company produced 6000 motor bodies each year.  They added, among others, Buick and Chevrolet and by 1921 Holden’s Motor Body Builders Ltd. also built bodies for Austin, Rover and Studebaker. The various stages of production occurred in premises on Grenfell Street, and King William Street. 

Woodville

In 1923 Edward W. Holden struck a deal to build motor bodies for the American company, General Motors Export Company. In the same year Holden’s Motor Body Builders Ltd.  purchased a 22 acre (9 hectare) site to enable expansion with the construction of a new manufacturing plant. In 1924 Holden’s built bodies for imported General Motors chassis at the new Woodville plant.

With the outbreak of war in 1939, Holden began producing war ordnance, including aircraft engines, machine guns, boats and armoured cars. For most of the war, all 5,000 employees at Woodville became employees of the federal government. By this time, Holden had expanded interstate with a new factory at Fishermans Bend, Melbourne.

The Woodville plant was particularly instrumental in the production of the first all-Australian Holden car, which was completed in 1948. Woodville was responsible for the bodies and the metal work.

Birkenhead

In 1926 General Motors (Australia) leased a 5.5 acre (2 hectare) plot from the South Australian Harbors Board on what is now the corner of Nelson Street and Semaphore Road in Birkenhead. The location seemed fortuitous, close to the Port River and the rail link, but it was also quite a distance to the centre of Adelaide which proved problematic in the future, especially because there was no bridge across the Port River until 1940.

Originally, the Birkenhead plant was intended to employ 100 workmen to produce 35 cars per day. The workforce more than doubled before the Depression impacted car sales dramatically. Now part of General Motors Holden’s Ltd., staff were transferred to the Woodville plant, manufacturing was consolidated, and Birkenhead became redundant for seven years.

Elizabeth

GMH was so successful, and the Woodville site limited in opportunities for expansion, that another factory became necessary. The new plant in Elizabeth, 27 kilometres north of Adelaide, was part of a £7.5 million investment for GMH in South Australia and officially opened in 1960. Set on 235 acres (95 hectares), the Elizabeth plant employed some 1,400 people in Stage 1 alone.   

GMH’s physical expansion signalled a boom in Holden car production, but the location of the factory was equally as important. Elizabeth was not only a place to work, but also a place to live. It attracted new migrants with the promise of a modern home and a job with Holden. It was named for Queen Elizabeth who visited the suburb, and of course, the Holden plant as well, in 1963. 

The site for the Elizabeth plant was chosen because of its favourable location for transport and communication, but also because GMH benefitted from the concurrent development of Elizabeth as a town. For example, because the growing population of Elizabeth had access to new gas pipelines and rail connections, so too did GMH.   

By 1985, the complex had grown to 123 hectares with 4,400 employees, and was producing over 200 vehicles per day. Holden Elizabeth was viewed as a leading manufacturer and a reliable supplier to world markets.

This number was helped by the advancement of technological equipment. However, GMH was careful to strike the right balance between robots and human labour, as seen in the following film excerpts.