Holden’s involvement in top-level professional motor racing is officially over. In a quirk of timing, the marque’s presence on track outlasted its existence in the showrooms by two years. It was back in early 2020 when General Motors announced that its famous Australian manufacturer would cease to exist at the end of that year. While it was a shock given Holden’s longevity, it wasn’t given the sales numbers. Local manufacturing had been dead since 2017, and people had abandoned rear-wheel-drive, four-door sedans for SUVs. The Commodore had become a rebadged version of the German-made Opel Insignia.
The flow-on effect was that the days of the Ford-versus-Holden rivalry in Australia’s top-level Supercars series were suddenly numbered. While people had stopped buying Holdens, they hadn’t stopped supporting them at race tracks around the country. Fortunately, ongoing delays with the new Gen3 rules meant that the Commodore would continue racing in Supercars until the end of the 2022 season, even though Holden itself had been consigned to history.
With the fleet of Holdens now having contested their last Supercars race, let’s take a look back at some of the make’s moments that made touring car history.
FIRST SUCCESS AT BATHURST AND IN THE ATCC
As soon as the early Holdens started rolling off the production line in the late 1940s, people started tuning and racing them. The famous Humpy Holdens and their easily tuneable straight-six ‘grey’ motors were a popular choice for Appendix J racing and were a consistent figure in the early days of the Australian Touring Car
