Australian Car Manufacturing – High Achievers, Orphans & Lost Souls. Part 2: 1946 – 1960
Our series on Australian car makers and the unique cars they produced, continues. The second World War saw the country’s manufacturers – and blacksmiths shops and forges – preoccupied with the war effort, and car production for the civilian marke
Our series on Australian car makers and the unique cars they produced, continues.
The second World War saw the country’s manufacturers - and blacksmiths shops and forges - preoccupied with the war effort, and car production for the civilian market slowed to a crawl.
Then, following the war, Australia’s political and economic allegiances began a slow shift, and American economic interests began to replace British ones. The Chifley Government had no difficulty in looking beyond a shattered British industry and anointing GM Detroit with the undertakings and political approval to develop Australia’s ‘own car’.
But there were others here, some with grand ideas, and some with more eccentric ones, who had their own plans for finding a manufacturing foothold in a rapidly growing, and, even then, diverse, Australian car market.
Here then is the next set of unique Australian cars, from post-war to the sixties, some of which barely made a mark, but others which have stood the test.
MORE: Part 1, 1900-1940
MORE: Part 3, 1960-1972
The Hartnett