Airdate: Wide Open Road

ABC1 will premiere a three part series on Australia’s love affair with cars in a new three part series, Wide Open Road, produced by Paul Clarke (Bombora: The Story of Australian Surfing, Long Way to the Top).

The series will show how a group of maverick petrol heads were able to unite our colonial cities and towns, how cars were agents of change and a look at our manufacturing industry. It will also feature racing car legends Sir Jack Brabham & Allan Moffat, comedians and entertainers Jean Kittson & Vince Sorrenti and even former politicians Steve Bracks and Paul Keating.

The byline for the show is “Australia through the windscreen.”

Cars united the nation and created some of our first national heroes.

Once the US giants General Motors Holden and Ford started manufacturing cars in Australia, and particularly with the arrival of the Holden FX, cars became affordable, gave Australian families a new level of freedom and shaped our cities.

It wasn’t in the nature of Aussie backyard inventors to be left behind and soon after Henry Ford made the world’s first car in Michigan in 1896 home-grown versions spluttered out of backyard workshops and onto the chaotic colonial roads.

Given the sheer size of the continent and its inhospitable terrain the car was inextricably linked to the birth of Australia and united our towns and cities. In 1912, Francis Birtles was the first to go from west to east. He got bogged on the first night and underwent incredible hardships finding a path across the continent but completed the trip in four weeks.

Everyone wanted to go faster than the next bloke, including the ladies. What is now the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne was one of Australia’s first long-distance race tracks. Car inventor Harley Tarrant and speed freak Norm “Wizard” Smith were early victors – Smith went on to break the world speed record over 10 miles in a car designed around a V12 RAAF engine. Smith and Birtles were among Australia’s first popular heroes.

Cars soon became the foundation of Australia’s manufacturing industry. Holden, a company in Adelaide that made horse-drawn carriages, diversified into car bodies in 1914 and by the end of World War I was making 600 a year for US car company General Motors, which eventually bought the business. Ford built a factory in Geelong.

Holden invented the all-enclosed Coupe – known as The Sloper – the grand-daddy of the Monaro. Ford was the first to launch the iconic ute.

With financial help from Prime Minister Ben Chifley, GMH designed a car for Australia. The arrival of the Holden FX at the end of the ‘40s changed everything. Every family had to have one and its affordability meant they could. The car became ubiquitous and moulded the shape of our suburbs. It symbolised prosperity and gave the people of Australia a new level of liberty. Suddenly they could travel wherever they damn well pleased.

Politicians understood that the car was a potent symbol of freedom. In the 1949 election, the first after World War II, one of Robert Menzies’ election promises was to abolish petrol rationing.  It helped him become Australia’s twelfth Prime Minister.

Starts Sunday, October 16th at 7.30pm on ABC1