Greetings All, I just found and joined the forum and was pleased to find so many fellow wagon fans. I have been browsing through and drooling over some of the fantastic machines. My wagon is a Holden 77 (called a 78 on the rego) HZ Kingswood. It was 600 bucks on ebay so don't laugh too hard at all the dents. The obligatory pics follow. :2_thumbs_up_-_anima I just washed it so it looks better than it actually is. I live on a dirt road so it is really hard to keep your car anything like clean. It's either mud or dust depending on how long since it rained. It's going to be fixed up gradually but it is a daily driver and my commute is a 120km round trip so I've only done mechanical things in the nearly two years I've been driving it. I have a couple of much straighter rear doors for it in the shed and parts for these models are still fairly cheap here. I will get all the bolt on panels and repair/paint them and swap panels to clean it all up. The front doors and everything forwards from there are interchangeable with the more common sedans so the other bits should be reasonably easy to get. It has done 54000km (33500 miles) in the last couple of years Holden are the Australian GM brand for those unfamiliar, and these are what you would call a unibody construction. The motor is a 202ci. inline six with three speed column shift manual trans. The HZ in the name is the model, as there was not a new model every year Holden ran a letter code. Kingswood is the trim and equipment level. It runs LPG (propane) or petrol with a neat conversion which replaces the original petrol tank with a half size petrol tank and the housing for the lpg tank. This means that the load area is almost as original except the spare is vertical in the side of the load area. OK thanks all I look forward to seeing lots more pics of all the fantastic full size machines you have over there. Especially PONTIACS I used to have a 63 ponti sedan and love the 59 to 64 safaris I'm seeing on here! Unfortunately they never made their way to Australia as wagons only sedans and hardtops. Cheers B
to the wagon train, B. Great intro and pix! That's a nice little wagon. I like the Holdens. Glad you found us and shared your story.
Yeah, thats our complaint as far as Holden coming here as Pontiac. welcome to the best wagon forum on the web!
Welcome BRC. What a neat wagon--really cleans up well. It looks like a combination of alot of our cars over here. The front is quite similar to an early 70's Monte Carlo, which was a 2 dr personal luxury coupe made by GM. The rear is reminscient of mid sixties Mercury wagons and the body, I guess, is somewhat similar to our Malibu wagons of that era. Sharp wagon. Thanks for the pictures.
thats a cool lil wagon!....it looks like Holden took a 71 MonteCarlo and a Volare wagon....thru them in the blender and Badabing !!! to the place BRC
Dirt Roads BRC Nice wagon, especially for the price. Happy to see you here with a few other wagon nuts. We live on a 1/2 mile lime rock dead end road. Have to drive down 1/4 mile of it plus another 1/4 mile lime rock road to get to paving. Either dusty or slimmy. Might as well be 50 miles after drivng on that stuff! But we make it slowly when out with the toys. Many here in boonies of Florida are used to seeing dirty cars! They aren't trophies or toys. Drive it and have fun.
You can see the similarities. Here's two '71 Montes and one '72. The '72, I think has a grille pattern even closer to yours.
Okay, one more thumbnail and I'll be done obsessing over this. Here's the rear of 1966 Mercury Comet wagon. Again, quite similar I think.
thanks all Thanks for the replies all As I said it looks better in the pics than it is, a little bit if rust is starting to appear so I have some work ahead. It doesn't need to be a show car though so I'll just be doing it one panel at a time. CatModelT, yes the roads mean that it will be dirty again in a day or two, and for the couple of months between washes it doesn't look like that at all. We just came out of 9 years of drought, I think the previous car only got one wash in that time. The Rev, that basic shape of holden started in 73, so a 71 montecarlo would have been just right to influence the designers. It went through to 78 with three other front end facelifts. The HZ is the final model. Snooterbuckets, thanks for the pics, yes there was a fair bit of appropriation going on, some clear similarities there. Interesting to see the ford tail lights, usually they would use bits from the GM parts bin. The speedo from the 63 ponti was reused in the 68 Holden HK Kingswood for example. Cheers B
Yes the current holden sportswagon is a nice looking machine, that would have been a nice Pontiac Grand Safari. B
