Holden's, T.J. Richards, Duncan & Fraser in Adelaide move from horse carriages to Australia's car builders
Staff outside the premises at 100 Grenfell Steet, Adelaide city, of Holden & Frost, with Henry Frost brought into the partnership from 1885, as it moved into the change from horse and arriage days to motor vehciles.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
Adelaide’s place in the 20th Century as a powerhouse of Australian car making was not something brought in from overseas.
The Australian car-making industry was spurred by the drive of three Adelaide horse coach/saddlery companies: Holden’s Motor Body Builders Ltd (Holden & Frost from 1885), floated in 1917; Duncan & Fraser, who switched to making and selling cars as early as 1903; and T.J. Richards and Sons, which became a car-body-building company in 1922.
Duncan & Fraser, quality horse coach builders who won the contract to build Adelaide's trams in the 1870s, were ambitious in their 20th Century switch to cars. Those ambitions were choked by Ford Motor Co. in the 1920s.
T.J. Richards and Sons were also bold in their car-building vision It was T.J. Richards that beat Holden’s in 1937/8 by selling Australia’s first all-steel sedan car body.
Holden and T.J. Richards had benefited from the 1917 federal government embargo on imported car bodies. But the family companies' next generation made the most of the opportunity, building solid business models. They embraced large investment, innovation and expansion.
Under Edward (Ted) Holden, Holden's Woodville plant, with the latest technology, became the biggest of its type outside the USA. But the Depression forced Holden’s into selling to American partner General Motors in the 1930s. T.J. Richards remained 100% Australian-owned until Chrysler Corporation bought control in 1951
