The year 1903 saw the beginning of Australia’s love affair with the car, a century-long romance that has fostered some remarkable engineers, entrepreneurs and trading partners, not to mention rally and racing drivers.
From racing greats like Sir Jack Brabham and motoring legend Bob Jane, this book looks at all the "movers and shakers" of the Australian automotive industry since its inception. Spawning a huge import, assembly and manufacturing industry along with innumerable associated industries, the car has had an incredible impact on the Australian psyche and landscape.
From Holden supplying an Australian mobile reconnaissance unit during the First World War and the development of the first Holden in 1948, to today’s cars packed with advanced technology, alternate fuel systems, airbags and satellite navigation systems, the book looks at the rapid technological advances through the later twentieth century and the creation of systems specifically designed for Australia’s tough conditions.
'Australians And Their Cars' salutes the automotive industry as one built on innovation and expansion, its development changing the way Australian society lives, breathes and thinks. This is an industry that has created new technologies and modified others, fashioned products and systems, altered our very topography and created new trades and professions, not to mention adding a whole range of new words to our vocabulary.
