Bellbird man Will Hagon and son Toby write book on history of Holden

A father-and-son duo of motorsport journalists have compiled a book that documents the history of the iconic motoring brand.

Holden: Our Car 1856-2017 is written by commentator and broadcaster Will Hagon (who lives in Bellbird) and his son Toby (a former Fairfax motoring editor).

Will Hagon said they thought about writing the book just after Holden’s announcement in early 2014 that it would stop manufacturing in Australia.

“We started talking about it and how important it was to detail the long-standing history of a company that had grown with Australia over more than 150 years,” he said.

Published by Pan Macmillan Australia, Holden: Our Car 1856-2017 is full of never-before-seen photos, artwork, advertising and futuristic designs from the Holden archive, and is both a celebration and a commemoration of the Australian car industry as we’ve known it for the last 160 years.

It documents Holden’s evolution from a saddle business servicing a frontier nation to a motoring empire building Australian cars for Australian conditions.

“As a motor sport commentator for more than 50 years, I’ve watched and reported on an thousands of Holdens in races, trials and rallies, as well as doing an enormous amount of work on road, from getting people all round this enormous country – often on difficult roads – and often while towing big loads,” Mr Hagon said.

“So I’m a fan of what they’ve done to meet the motoring needs of this vast and often demanding country.

“It was that that we tried to encapsulate, so that people could really understand what James Alexander Holden started when he came to Adelaide and starting his saddlery business in the 1850s.”

Mr Hagon said Holden’s decline was “sad but inevitable”, with Asia’s lower prices and closer proximity to Europe making it impossible for Australian manufacturers to compete.

“It’s devastating in many ways, yet I can’t see a way around it,” he said.

“The tragedy is we’ve got designers, engineers and management as good as anywhere in the world.”