Holden was founded way back in 1852 as a saddle business by James Holden. It delivered good service, and then in 1905 his son entered, named Edward Holden. Edward had been, for many years, interested in automobiles since their beginning about five years earlier as a hobby of sorts, and after a while he moved the company into repairs of upholstery of cars, and later to manufacturing sidecars for motorbikes. When the First World War hit, they were restricted in trade, so they began manufacturing car body’s whole, rather than minor parts and pieces. In 1931, GM came along and decided to gobble up Holden and bought it straight out. When the end of the Second World War rolled around and finally ended Holden made their very first car – although Ford did attempt to become the first, and they submitted a large detailed report, all GM did was have a list of who would get fiscal aid. Soon the first Holden was on the roads in 48, and later in the 50’s Holden became the dominant car brand in the market in Australia.
The Holden cars offered luxuries and performance at prices that no others could really match, with expandability and otherwise easily coping with higher demand of the postwar booming economy. Consistently the market share was dominated right up to the sixties, at more than fifty percent. In the sixties Ford came back, and unveiled the Ford Falcon in Australia around the same time as it did in the U.S. However, the Falcon was not designed for the rough roads of Australia, and Holden – who had been there for a very long time – easily outmatched the Ford with durability and longevity. Even with the competition from more major companies Holden held on, and their cars remained the better seller.
In the seventies they launched new designs and new lines of vehicles, all of which were Australian in design – but by the close of the decade they were relying on oversea designs to build their cars. In the eighties came the real challenges that most other car companies had seen throughout their entire durations and even today – slumping sales, and a poor economy wreaked some havoc on the car brand. Holden then began resorting to selling re-branded vehicles. The nineties saw the classic car company comeback, and thus the Holden lived, and continues today with good sales.