12th Dec 2006, 05:31
I bought my HD when I was 15 for $250 from an old farmer, since then it has been my wedding car, my 4WD, towed a broken down Land-drover and ambulance for the birth of my first child. At the moment it is holding up a shed in the countryside. It has given me a fair share of problems from cold starts, losing a back wheel at 100Km/p/hr, almost flipping when the tail shaft fell off the gearbox to peeling open a corolla with its WICKED front weapons. But all that pails into insignificance when compared to the current MODERN European car I drive (when it works). They may look like bricks and handle like buckets of (you know what) but hell they are the most reliable car you could ever get, and I am going to go back to them.
(My wife says) Hail to the HD Holden, she always started and purrs like a kitten. She even got me to the hospital when I was sick, she saved my life!!
As you can tell we are big fans of this little piece of Australian motoring history.
Viva La HD.
11th Feb 2007, 18:20
*Did hd stand for highly dangerous or was that huge disaster.*
Before I start, I like early Holdens and that includes HD's and HR's, but my favourite is the EK.
Re the above comment, in the early nineties, I read an article that said that people used to say "HD" stands for Horribly Designed and "HR" stands for Hastily Rectified.
9th Mar 2007, 10:43
I lived in NZ for seven years in the 1970s, and was the happy owner of a Holden HD wagon. I now live in Spain and have owned a number of cars since then (currently driving a Renault Megane), but none of them held a candle to the Holden. Absolutely my favourite car of all time - reliable, roomy, reasonably economical for its size, if I remember correctly, and made frequent trips between ChCh and Geraldine a breeze.
Golly, how I miss that car!
16th Mar 2007, 21:26
I am doing up an old HD Holden, this is my first car. I have recently redone the seats at a nice white. I am now doing the rust and paint. I am painting it blue. Soon it will be on the road, and I’ll enjoy these future years as you people have.
9th Jun 2008, 07:56
I suppose years ago the great things about the old Holdens was they were worth next to nothing. Like my dad was telling me, he owned heaps of old Holdens, mostly FB and EK's, and said they were that cheap that if they broke down, they used to just dump em on the side of the road, and go out and buy another one. It might sound wasteful now, but it was the 70's when there were heaps of old Holdens still available.
23rd Mar 2006, 18:05
My 1st car was a HD Holden. Wish I still had it now. I worked at Holden's Elizabeth as a contract industrial cleaner in the N.E.P.S. paint shop during the mid to late 1990's.A fellow work buddy of mine was local and had lived in Elizabeth all his life, an ex Assembly plant worker who took a reduncancy package, now back there as contractor, knew everything about Holden's.
He told me stuff about the HD's, like how the Police wouldn't use them because of the sharp grille, bonnet and fender's, the Ambulance's followed suit. He told me how there was a stack of them that stayed in the yard as unsold stock even once the HR's were under way. The best bit is he said that because so many never got sold that they were dumped out to sea somewhere and formed an artificial reef. I found this hard to believe, but another friend of mine has a cousin in Queensland, he leads diving expeditions and could probably track down the exact location of "H.D.REEF".You can more than likely visit it... imagine that!!!Anyone interested?