I have just purchased a 1967 HR Premier with a factory 4 speed.GMH no longer have the records and I am trying to find out how many of the 4 speed HR's were produced.Anybody have that info?
GFT

GT

Hi Guys.

Cloudy, where did you get the 500 figure ? I think the real number will be lost in history, but that the HR Premier Opel combination would be one of the rarest in GM-H Aust production history. I really do think that there would be less than 500 made.

I've been interested in Holdens since before HRs were new & yet I've only ever seen 6 or 8 HR Premiers with Opels fitted. The shifter through the console is the unique bit.

You mention the 'boomerang' shift. Do you mean the flat bar style shifter instead of the round shifter lever. AFAIK, the flat bar lever was only used in HK/T/G Opels with the non-console shift & bench front seat. All HR Opels with or without console use the round bar lever.

Another unique point in HR Opels is that the console lid opens to the rear, instead of opening to the front like a column shift HR Premier. This is so that the padded lid doesn't hit the shifter lever.

Dr Terry

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When calculating a car restoration budget, be as accurate as you can & then double the final figure. It will be closer to the truth.

I'm not sure what benefit would have been gained by keeping such records? It is a given it would be great if they did, but I cannot see why they'd have bothered.

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If we all had the same (good) taste, who would buy all the Fords?

I reckon 50 TO 100 cars max, but thats my HDX2-HR186S opinion.




dc

In the book Australias own by Shane Birney on page 119 shows a new HR special with bench seat and a 4spd with boomerang shifter the stalk is rounded not flat bar.

Holden's history is of benefit to us as enthusiasts, but keeping history does not sell cars, which Holden is in the business of doing.

What history do we keep in our jobs? At my work we have to keep records for 5 years, and that takes up heaps of room. In all the time I have been there I am yet to have someone come back and ask for it.

Should the motor registry keep the name of every person a car is registered to? Should they keep the exams of every driving test?

I worked on the railways in Sydney and the amount of memos that we through in the bin would have a railway enthusiast crying. At one location we moved workshops and we found some old paperwork that we passed onto the railway museum, it was the procedures for the electricians at the Chulora workshops in the event of an air raid by the Japanese. Interesting piece of history, but after the war was over of no use. (after all they never got bombed). BTW the Chulora workshops manufactured tanks and planes during the war.

There would be simular stuff from Holden, but would have been binned after the war.

Simply the amount of paperwork that Holden ran on was huge, the HK Monaro and Brougham convention folder is about 3" thick and has heaps of information, menues for the weekend, timetables of busses to and from the hotels, speaches, orders for cars, sunvisor slips, memos to the magazines, requests for photos, lists of journalists who were to attend and what their flights were, memos to Acacia Ridge on preparing the cars, when they were to be delivered to Surfer's Paradise, press tags, lists of who would fly back and who would drive a car back to their state, just to list a few things.

This is just one folder, there was also a dealer convention in each state and a simular folder would have existed for each one of these.

Then there is the engineering report which is about 400 pages, with plenty of updates. When updates are made to these the old pages are to be removed and thrown away so as to keep them up to date. Those thrown away pages would be great to have, but needed to be removed and destroyed to prevent errors.

Then there would be trim and colour reports, internal meetings, results of public surveys, marketing reports, sales per month sumaries, popular option reports, dealer order forms, ordeing procedures, manufacting reports amd procedures, orders for parts for just in time manufacturing, they needed to know what was coming down the line next Wednesday and have all to parts ordered to arrive that day. So there would be orders to internal Holden entities like the engine manufacturing plant, for so many 186s, 161s, same with transmissions, rear axles, panels. Then the external entities like smiths industries for heaters, VDO for speedos and guages.

Once a car is out of warranty what use is build info to Holden? Even if they kept one page per car, ie a build sheet or order form, they would have 7 million pieces of paper. That would be 14000 packets of photo copy paper.

Even if they had it, how hard would it be to find your car in it? Who is gong to pay the wages of the person finding it?

When you start looking at what paperwork they generated you understand why they did not keep it.

Warren

The best part about being wrong is the pleasure it brings to others.

Warren...not hard to keep track of the numbers of each model produced. We are not talking volumes of paper.One piece of paper would have told the complete story with a summary of each variation.You don't need an MBA for that.I am a new Holden owner just trying to get a few facts.The Holden story is fantastic..I just cannot accept that GMH have trashed the records.Let me say say that European manufacturers have a complete history.Mercedes are terrific. If we don't learn from history then we are bound to repeat it.Holden is an Autralian icon. It should be recorded.
Cheers...GT





GT

Mercedes Benz keep all their history because they are German made Cars and in Germany everything was documented to the enth degree because thats what Germans do .
Australians dont place such an emphasis on history it seems as we are a reasonably new country compared to others . But in saying that , everything at Holden would have been documented , but as to whether they cared to keep it is another thing .
I have heard it by muliple collectors of Holden literature that Holden at Fishemans bend threw out actual truck loads of pre 1972 records to the South Melbourne tip decades ago. And that much of it was saved by workers at the tip . Whether this is really true or fable or which records they were we may never know ?

www.monaromuscleparts.com

quote:

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Originally posted by petaus
they should of kept the records and transfered them to computer, would be easy to search by vin, chassis number or engine number and give you all the info options paint etc, but back then i guess they thought no one would have this much interest in them, they could charge $50 for a letter good little money maker for them.
funny how the germans lost the records of how many people they gassed at auswhich etc???

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Greetings, The records were all on computer from 1963. The EH was the first Holden "on-line" as it were. I'm surprised at some comments by the big guns on here in relation to the topic in general. These guys are quite often all too quick to blurt out facts and figures when it suits. Production numbers will probably remain a hot topic of debate until the totals are released and put on the internet for all to see. That day can't come soon enough it would seem.


look out, the guru is coming through...

Sort of sorry I asked the question now !

GT