Think Holden concepts and people often cast their minds all the way back to the incredible 1969 Hurricane or the GTR-X that followed soon after. Things went pretty quiet for more than two decades after that. Fanciful, adventurous design was very much subjugated by the need to shape the look of an enormous line-up of ever-evolving production cars. Holden’s financial woes of the late 1980s discouraged playfulness in the design department, too.
But by the mid-to-late 1990s creativity was being let off the leash at Holden’s design centre in Fishermens Bend. Staff numbers were growing, and the ideas emerging from brilliant young minds could not be contained.
In fact, Holden design leader Michael Simcoe, now in the same role globally for General Motors, wanted to do just the opposite. He wanted to encourage it. The result was a series of concept cars that were revealed at Melbourne and Sydney motor shows between 1998 and 2004.
It started with the dazzling debut of the Commodore Coupe in Sydney in October 1998 and finished with TT36 in the same city exactly six years later. It was a short, intense burst of automotive creative genius. The star was burning dazzlingly bright less than 20 years before Holden’s demise.
“We were living the dream,” says Peter Hughes. “I think you can look back now and think we went through a period that was just awesome. We were no more talented, no more clever, but we went through a period where we did some great stuff.”
Adds Richard Ferlazzo: “Concept cars have a lot of benefits. One is it motivates people within the company because it’s exciting and you explore the whole idea of exploring. You just can’t do that through production cars because it takes too long, there’s too many people involved and there’s too much risk.
“But with a concept car it’s ‘who cares?. Get it right or get it or wrong, at least you get the public reaction and you’ll see if there’s value in it.
“For Holden, what it did at the time was ‘wow that’s
