Our Touring Past

General Motors-Holdens Ltd.

Quite by accident I ran across this advertisement on 'Trove' which shows that post war GM-H actually built a caravan. It has been mentioned from time to time but here it is. What a nice item to tow behind your post war GM car in 1945-6. I wonder how many were actually built and for how long?
Might they have been built at Fishermen's Bend plant or maybe the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation which was part owned by GM-H and who would have had some surplus aluminium?

It was marketed in conjunction with The Myer Emporium who provided the interior. As with all these things now, more questions than answers.

George

Well George you have done it again, well done. As an early Holden enthusiast I have always heard rumours of a caravan that was built by Holden but it could never be proven, well thats till now. I hope you dont mind but I have added a picture to the ourtouringpast facebook page and its proven to be a very hot topic at the moment.

Hi Richard

I've had a bit more of a delve on Trove but have not turned up another advertisement before or after this one. Maybe they only ever built the one! Seems like a funny thing to get into so soon after the War when in the same paper, same date an article indicated that it would be April, 1946 before the first GM cars would be back in production. And, a Vauxhall dealer was offering ONE tyre for a Vauxhall as a prize in a competition for the best tale about a Vauxhall, if they could get one released by the powers that held the reigns on such things!

So a caravan? Nothing new to tow it with, tyres restricted and petrol rationing in place for years to come.

During 1946 I did find references to Preston's Motors (Melb.) taking orders for GM-H built trailers which would be supplied with new tyres, but nothing else about caravans in 1946. Not much of a trailer at that 3'6" wide, just a metre! And the 8hp car could tow it, until it was filled with wet sand.

Something else might turn up, I nice Myer catalogue from that time? Just has to be found, but I think it may have been a very short lived foray.

A hot topic on Facebook, I thought only rumours about celebrities made it buzz!

George

I finally located this little snippet from the Townsville Daily Bulletin, 20 January, 1937, where the last paragraph referred to the possibility of GM-H producing caravans. I knew I had it somewhere. So it had been on the cards for a while it would appear.

George

griffin wrote:A hot topic on Facebook, I thought only rumours about celebrities made it buzz!

George

George it seems as though its all happening on facebook now, there is the ourtouringpast facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ourtouringpast ... ne/?ref=hl

as well as a Vintage caravans buy and sell page here https://www.facebook.com/groups/392324210860413/

and you wouldnt read about it but also a group of blokes that are interested in old Vauxhall cars here https://www.facebook.com/Classic-Vintag ... /timeline/

Its interesting that the Holden caravan ad was a very hot topic on Facebook with around 5000 people reading the ad in the first week.