The below article is taken from Classic & Sports Car, November 2004 issue.  Many thanks to Editor, James Elliott, and his team.

The Holden EH was rugged, spartan and Oz to the core, the Velox PB as British as scampi and chips.  Andrew Roberts drives two General Motors 'sixes' from the hedonistic '60s.

There are five major icons of early '60s Australian pop culture, the first four being The Seekers and the fifth the EH series Holden.  The Holden Coach-Building Company was bought by General Motors in 1931 and, although GM-Holden was wholly American owned by the time the EH appeared in October 1963, it was regarded as an entirely Australian design.  Since the launch of the Chevrolet-derived FX series in 1948, Holden's local content had progressively increased - appropriately for a car billed as "Australia's Own" - and, by '63, the marque had been enjoying a 50 percent market share for more than a decade.  Since the late '40s, Holden had been operating a one-model policy so, when the new EH was launched, it carried a heavy burden of public expectation.  It was one of the last Holdens to be priced in £sd before Australia converted to dollars in 1966.  The new car sold  more than a quarter of a million units in 18 months and , after four decades, remains Australia's fastest-selling car.

Rival six-cylinder cars from BMC, Chrysler and Ford were also manufactured in Australia, but were all designed abroad.  The EH bodyshell combined slick state-of-the-art '60s styling, with enough space for six occupants and compact dimensions for heavy urban use - taxi firms being long-established Holden customers.  The all-new 2.4 litre 'Red Engine' was a quick and durable design, free from the overheating and failures that bedeviled so many of its overseas rivals.  About 10,000 Holden EHs were exported to 55 countries in 1963-'64, giving the marque a tenuous but genuine presence in GM dealerships abroad.  It was sold in places as far flung as Hawaii, Jamaica, Spain, Switzerland and Hong Kong and, more often than not, would share showroom space with in-house General Motors rivals.  The concept of a GM 'world car' still lay in the future so, typically, a Swiss dealer might sell the Holden alongside the Chevrolet Corvair, Opel Kapitan and the EH's closest family rival, the PB series Vauxhall Velox and Cresta.

Vauxhall's big PB saloon is often overlooked, lacking the flamboyance of its PA predecessor and the vast PC that succeeded it. Its nearest rivals, Ford's MkIII Zephyr and Zodiac, also enjoyed the benefit of a far higher public profile, thanks to world-class PR and BBC TV's Z-Cars.

Another factor that ensured the PB's rarity was severe corrosion, despite Vauxhall's much-touted 'Magic Mirror' acrylic paint finish.  A combination of heavily salted roads in winter and poor quality control has ensured that the Vauxhall Cresta Club currently has fewer than 50 PBs on its books, the vast majority of survivors being the more upmarket and faintly spivvy Crestas. 

Vauxhall intended the 2.6-litre PB to be an 'Oldsmobile for the British Commonwealth' and, in many overseas markets, it was a success.

Switzerland was a major European market, particularly for the more powerful 1964-'65 3.3-litre models.  It was also assembled in several Commonwealth countries, notably New Zealand, where the Velox became a familiar sight in the black-and-white livery of the traffic police and the maroon of the airport taxi service.  The Holden EH was not particularly successful there, being considered stodgy in comparison with the big Vauxhall.  How much of this can be attributed to a combination Anglophilia and Austrophobia is open to debate, but the Velox achieved a measure of success in Australia.

GM-Holden manufactured other General Motors products, including Bedford commercial vehicles, Chevrolets, Pontiacs and, until 1967-'68, Vauxhalls.  The PB Velox was sold in Australia until 1966, occupying a niche between the Holden and the Chevrolet, and there are probably more PBs in the antipodes than there are in the UK.  Ironically, the EH was never officially marketed in Britain, making our test a unique opportunity to compare two rival GM 'sixes'.

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