Holden: History of Australian car manufacturer chronicled at SA State Library
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The State Library of South Australia is home to countless tomes.
Everything from Shakespeare to Steinbeck, Hemingway to Holden — as in the collected works of the car company, Holden.
Archivist Jenny Scott explained the carmaker had been depositing historic materials at the library since 1997.
"The Holden collection covers 140 metres of shelf space, if you can imagine what 140 metres of shelf space looks like, that's a lot," Ms Scott said.
Or to put it in a very Australian way, almost the length of three Olympic swimming pools or about 29 current model Commodores parked end to end.
The records cover Holden's inception in the 1850s as an Adelaide saddlery maker, through to its start as a car body builder — then the merger with GM in the 1930s and onwards into the 21st century.
There are some unexpected insights, like a Ford emerging from a Holden factory.
In the first decades of the 20th century Holden actually built bodies for a range of brands, not just Ford, but Fiat too.
There is advertising material for some of Holden's own best-loved models.
A striking yellow Monaro, with a cat suit-clad woman slinking out of it. Pure 1960's style.
Then there is the decade style forgot — the 1970s.
Holden's publicity gurus decided nuns in need were a divine way to sell Kingswoods.
"I think the advertising team were having a great deal of fun at this stage, weren't they?" Ms Scott remarked.
From the vantage point of 2016, it's hard to pick what seems more bizarre: a car full of stranded nuns, or the car's God awful green paint job.
Still, as Ms Scott points out, taste is subjective.
"I think the colour of the car is beautiful ... and it was the 70s!"
The archivist would say that though, Ms Scott revealed she once owned a Torana in a questionable shade of blue.
Most Australians have some kind of Holden-related memory, but Ms Scott argued the archive was much more than a cutesy trip down memory lane.
It is an indispensable, invaluable record of how we became who we are.
"This is a social history, an industrial history of Australia really," Ms Scott said.
"It talks not just about Holden cars, the collection also talks about government policy around car production and tariffs.
"They are critical to someone doing major research into issues like that, and they are critical to someone wanting to make sure they are repainting their Torana the correct colour.
"The World War II records show how women came into the workplace.
"There's something for everyone in really any aspect of Australian history in the last 150 years in this collection."
Ford's archives shifting to US
Not all of Holden's records are in the state library, but the company has confirmed the materials it holds will stay in Australia when local manufacturing finishes next year.
Which is why Ford fans are so worried about that company's plans.
In a statement to the ABC, Ford said it was shifting its archives to the US at the end of 2016.
"We expect to move some of the many archival materials by the end of the year and donate the remainder to local museums early in 2017," they said.
"We are joining other Ford markets transitioning historic materials to a new, state-of-the-art global Ford archive in Dearborn ... Ford has a proud history in Australia and around the world, and we are investing significantly to preserve and leverage that history."
Nicholas Heath from the Geelong Museum of Motoring and History fears what will be left behind will be incoherent bits and pieces, of no real value to historians and the public.
"It would be a tragedy if there weren't some tangible reminders in this country of this tremendous legacy of what happened with manufacturing in Australia," Mr Heath said.
"You need to be able to examine materials firsthand ... it's a wonderful treasure trove, the marketing materials are like a time capsule, they give you glimpses into what the culture valued, what the society valued, each generation you can see it there."
Cars come and go, but memories are forever.
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