National Motor Museum, Birdwood

As part of my recent road trip to South Australia for the Bay to Birdwood event, I attended the National Motor Museum.  Entry to the museum is part of the Bay to Birdwood experience, but the museum would be well worth a visit at any other time.

While the museum has a varied collection, the thing that makes it stand out is the focus on Australian motoring history, and in particular, cars made in South Australia.  South Australia was vital to the Australian car industry when it still existed.  And seeing that shows what we have lost.

The best part of the museum for me was seeing the Holden Concept cars.  My favorite was the 1970 Torana GTR-X.  It was essentially Australia’s own competitor to the Datsun 240Z.  I personally think it could have sold really well, but from what I understand risk adverse management in GM killed it off.  It was supposed to be released in 1973, with three cars built.  Two survive, and the one in the museum was the promotional car.   Along the same lines was the 1969 Hurricane.  Unlike the Torana that was seriously considered for production, this was very much a concept.  It already had a reversing camera and an early satnav.  It is very striking, but I preferred the Torana.

There was also a WB Kingswood, a car that was cancelled after the launch of the VB Commodore.  The assumption being there wasn’t room in the lineup for a car between the new Commodore and the WB Statesman.  They were probably right, but Holden did loose sales at the time from people who wanted a larger car.

They also had concepts like a convertible Ute in in the same vein as the Chevrolet SSR, and a convertible Monaro.  I can’t see the Ute having done well, but the Monaro may have.  They also had a concept for a later generation Monaro that was never built, that probably would have done ok.

Along one wall they had a bunch of Holden Milestone cars, e.g. most of the Holdens made to celebrate each million milestone, the last being the 7th Millions in August 2008.  They had the last Holden from 2017, and I later learned that Holden Manufactured 7,687,675 cars.  An impressive achievement in a small country like Australia.

As well as the Holdens, they had a good section about pioneering motoring in Australia, and some early cars manufactured here that were not commercially successful.  Then there was a section of commercial vehicles, plus of course the general section.  Is a serious car museum complete without a Gullwing or a Bugatti?  Clearly the museum curators think not, as they have one of each.

I spent about an hour in there due to there being so much to see outside the museum.  Had I come on any other day I could have spent a lot longer.