Shifting Gear

Shifting Gear: Design, Innovation and the Australian Car is an exhibition about the search for and development of an Australian car.
Definitely not just for the car enthusiast, some were pieces of beauty!

Shifting Gear is a celebration of Australian automobile design represented by twenty-three cars, dating from late nineteenth century to the present day. It demonstrates the skill and sophistication of an automobile industry that could design and manufacture a mass-produced car from the ground up, a feat not many countries can boast.

This is a holden!! New development design

There was this beautiful car in the foyer looking like a sleek Jaguar, but all crawling around it kept saying "A Holden!!" as if they do not make things of beauty.
Certainly many cars today all look very alike (try to find your silver car in the car park!) I particularly can't understand the mundane look of the small Mercedes and BMW. They look like any other small hatch. If I drove one I would like it to look like a BMW!
The exhibition traces the development of the family car from its earliest steam driven /horseless carriage" There were  a lot of stories behind the development of some great vehicles and the people who styled them.

Bolwell Nagari 

There was the Bolwell car  (Factory on Wells Road Seaford) that we know about because Celia boarded with Bev Bolwell while at Teachers college.

Then there is Lewis Bandt who in 1924 was apprenticed at age of 14 to a car maker and his job was to draw up special bodies for customers
Then in 1933 which Australia recovering from the depression, he made automative history when  he was tasked by Ford in Melbourne to design car that could be 'driven to church on Sunday but feed the sheep during the week".
He designed the Ute!

The interior of the tray is wood.

This untouched 1934 model was found in 1987 under a peppercorn tree in Gippsland. It has not been restored at all.

Holden Hurricane Coupe Concept car.

Buick Avenir concept model MADE OF AUTOMATIVE MODELLING CLAY!

What I didn't know is that there are Concept cars made, that are never meant to go into production but for design ideas. The beautiful Holden at the top is one of these.
I'm thinking of trading up, That will be my goal!!!