How many 327's were built in Adelaide ,I have build no. 189 delivered 30/5/69 , it sat in the showroom of Lock motors at Magill for a couple of months before being sold, when did they build the last one and how late were they still sitting on showroom floors around Australia?

I spoke to Ben and the highest Elizabeth number he has is 233. Yours may well be one of the last handful that were sold as new by dealers, there was a whole batch of them (late Elizabeth built 327's) that were all first registered in Victoria - the guess is they were registered by GMH and used internally to be later sold off as used cars. The same appears to have happened at the end of HQ and probably happened at the end of other series too. Probably the 327's weren't selling and the bulk of the HT range was available at the end of May 1969 so they built up a batch using the last of the componentry but didn't want 327's being sold by dealers alongside HT's.

If you want any more info you can contact Ben direct at Holden Historical Services.

^^Evidence which does reflect that GMH had ordered sufficient quantity of imported GTS327 bits to satisfy their projections for what would be purchased from GMH stock or ordered by retail customers. The fact that they weren't even being bought quickly out of dealer stock further supports this. Projections would have been based upon 1968 GTS327 sales. However sales and orders or dealer stock sales appear to not have met projection so GMH were left with compenentry and HT release was rapidly approaching. GMH appears to have built a bulk lot of GTS327's (at least at Elizabeth) and used them for internal use rather than sell them at a big discount taking sales away from HT (if you went to buy a HT GTS in June/July and the only V8's you could buy was a 253 4spd or a 307 auto and could get a new GTS327 for a similar price what would you do?). Then later sell them off as dealer tenders as used cars.