Well a real sense of excitement and national pride
accompanied the first Holden,
the car made in Australia for Australia.
Now 60 years later, the very first Holden prototype
has been restored to her former glory.
SONG: *Holdin’ you in my Holden,
*You were meant to be mine.
*We will have a wedding, no regretting,
*Baby ain't that fine. The historic motor vehicle fleet
at the National Museum of Australia
is stored now in these plastic bubbles,
with positive air pressure keeping the dust off them.
It's an ideal and a very economical way
of storing these kinds of collections.
Here is the Museum's very much pride and joy,
the number one prototype Holden,
which came into the collection in 2007.
This particular model was the very first
of the three prototypes
that were built by hand by a team of Australian
and American engineers in Detroit in 1946.
It came to Australia in 1947 under a shroud of secrecy
as the prototype models for the first vehicles
that came off the line in 1948 at Fishermen's Bend.
The Museum has developed a policy of preserving
form as well as function. The preservation of form is a fairly
straightforward routine conservation activity.
But there is a very interesting element
of preserving function,
particularly with older vehicles and older technologies,
because the knowledge, the information
and the spare parts to keep these objects
going is disappearing.
So we have to design ways in this
we can keep these objects alive, we can keep the technologies alive,
we can keep the knowledge alive.
So the National Museum of Australia has specialised
in this part of the preservation of form and function.
We are developing ways and means of
preserving this function well into the future
so that we are able to show people, to demonstrate to people,
how these objects worked,
what they looked like when they worked,
even what they smelt like when they worked.
It's a very visceral part of preservation,
and the work that the large technology
program is doing at the National Museum
is really producing some remarkable results.
So we're here in the technology workshop of the National Museum
and standing underneath the Holden prototype.
What we’re observing here tells us that this is the real thing
because the underside of the body shows these hand-welded seams
where the vehicle was very much constructed by hand
as the prototype for the ensuing 1948 model.
It's painted white.
We believe originally it was painted white,
because that made it easier to see during the road tests
if there were any stress fractures and such like.
The vehicle itself is a very faithful and well-researched restoration
so that we are quite confident that what we're seeing now
is very much as we would have seen the Holden prototype back in 1946.
So it really is a great privilege to be able to work on objects
of this significance and value and to have the knowledge
that we'll be responsible really for ensuring
that these kinds of objects live well into the future.
The Holden prototype has had some work done on the engine,
and quite recently we needed to run the engine in.
Of course, this is quite a problem for us
in that it's a vehicle of very high value and great significance
so we can't possibly run it in on the open road.
That's where we are fortunate
in collaborating with our friends the NRMA,
who provided access to the Oran Park race track.
We were able to take the vehicle out
very safely and in very controlled conditions
to do some test runs and get the engine up to speed,
to get the oil up to temperature, so that we were able to see
how the vehicle was performing, we were able to make
all the necessary predictions we needed to do the necessary tests
to ensure that we were doing the right thing with the vehicle
and we were confident that
it would survive well into the future.
The day at Oran Park was very exciting.
We had a lot of media.
We had all the right people to drive the vehicles
so it proved to be a very successful event.
SONG: *Troubles come, my dear
*But as long as we two travel together,
*We'll take them all in top gear.
*Holdin' you in my Holden
*Life is simply sublime
*I'll be holdin' you all life through
*when you're mine, all mine.