Holden Hurricane
It is likely that the years from 1964 to 1969 were the most optimistic ever experienced by Holden’s senior executives. The new Technical Centre at Fishermans Bend had been opened on 10 June 1964 with great fanfare: GMH believes no idea to be eternal. It has always been the objective of General Motors to build more and better things and constantly search for technological improvement.
The EH Holden Premier set a new standard of luxury and performance for Australianmanufactured cars. It was proving to be the most popular Holden to date. But, naturally, the suits at GMH were confident that the forthcoming HD model with its curved side glass and latest Detroit styling would fare even better.
The EJ’S design had been revised in Detroit after Bill Mitchell’s design team objected to Alf Payze’s car. The EH and the HD were styled by the Americans and sent out to Australia in boxes for review. The decision to build the Technical Centre seems to have been related to the EJ fiasco. Certainly for the next decade or so, the design and engineering of Australia’s Own Car was to be overseen by Americans dispatched to Australia ¬– Bill Steinhagen, Joe Schemansky, Leo Pruneau.
It was in this context that the idea was conceived to develop a brilliant new prototype which would showcase the genius residing within the walls of the Technical Centre. Although this car was never intended for production, it would have a halo effect on even the humblest Holden Standard sedan, utility or Station Sedan. This was the Holden Hurricane, coded RD 001 and the first fruit of GMH’S Research and Development section. Its purpose was ‘to study design trends, propulsion systems and other long-range developments’.
The Hurricane was the first in a Holden tradition of concept cars; others include the Torana GTR-X, Torana TT36 and EFIJY. The first drawings of the Hurricane were likely to have been executed in the 1964-65 timeframe. By this stage, the ‘New Generation’ HK Holden design was in its infancy. GMH seemed to have comprehensively defeated the challenge to its market leadership posed by Ford Australia’s Falcon and the lusty Chrysler Valiant. The local automotive world did indeed seem to be GMH’S oyster. Nevertheless, there was awareness within the organisation that some more educated motorists – who often expressed their views by buying British or continental European cars – regarded Holdens as fairly basic and unsophisticated, albeit reliable and durable. The Hurricane must in part have been conceived to show that the engineers and designers employed by General Motors’ Australian subsidiary had a vision way beyond even the Holden EH
LEFT: The Hurricane in 1969 when Holden was known for the HK Kingswood. It might as well have cruised in from outer space!
Premier! Similar thinking would later inform the GTR-X, a sports coupe that was indeed intended to arrive in the showroom.
The Hurricane was the star of the 1969 Melbourne Motor Show. Holden’s engineering director Bill Steinhagen said it was a research tool. About the only aspect of the mid-engined Hurricane that related directly to forthcoming production Holdens was a high-performance 260-horsepower edition of the 253 cubic-inch V8 engine scheduled to appear beneath the bonnet of the imminent HT Holden.
This engine sat behind the passenger compartment and further back again was a locally designed four-speed manual gearbox.
All-independent suspension – at a time when most Holdens still used semi-elliptic springs on the rear – was used with drag struts connecting each lower control arm to frame-mounted pivot brackets for positive front wheel control. At the
rear were swing axles with trailing links pivoted to the frame and double universal joints. Coils were fitted all round (foreshadowing the HQ Holden of 1971).
Disc brakes were used all-round, the front ones being described in MODERN MOTOR (May 1969) as ‘fully enclosed oil-cooled multiple discs:
They operate on the principle of four fixed plates to which is bonded a brake facing surface and three rotating discs sliding on a splined surface on the wheel hubs.
The whole unit is encased in an aluminium alloy housing attached to the steering knuckle.
The plates are actuated by means of a large diameter piston applied by hydraulic pressure through a master cylinder using hydraulic oil. The kinetic energy of the vehicle is directly converted to heat in the oil, which is then dissipated through brake-cooling radiators
mounted in the nose of the car.
Much of the developmental work on these brakes has been carried out in Australia, although the idea is, we believe, American in origin.
Equally interesting are the ingress/egress arrangements. A power-operated perpex turret lifts upwards and forwards over the front guards via gas struts, while the seats and steering wheel are simultaneously raised, the seats also moving out laterally. The Hurricane’s engine cannot be fired until the turret is locked in place and the driver has fastened the inertia-reel seat belt. There is an integral rollbar.
Rear vision is handled by a closed-circuit television monitor relaying its story to a monitor in the electronic digital-display instrument panel. There is integrated climate control air-conditioning and an auto-seek radio. Those levitating seats are described as ‘astronaut-type’.
There is also a feature that seems almost unbelievably quaint these 52 years later, namely the ‘Pathfinder’ navigation system: magnets embedded in the road relay their signals to a computer inside the car.
The Hurricane stands just 39 inches tall, three inches lower than the Ford GT40. The fibreglass body is mounted on a steel box section perimeter frame with rubberinsulated mountings. The paintwork is a vibrant aluminium-flaked metallic orange. The fuel tank is foam-lined and there is a fire-warning system.
Some months after revealing the remarkable and unique Hurricane, Holden announced an utterly realistic highperformance coupe that, management said, was possibly destined for production. It was as if one of the marketing suits had said, it’s all very well showing the pie-inthe-sky experimental car, but let’s offer our customers a chance to buy something really special.
This was the Torana GTR-X, offered to a selection of motoring journalists to drive at the Lang Lang Proving Ground late in the third quarter of 1970. In concept, it was perhaps closest to the Datsun 240Z, first shown in 1969.
Adventures after its first (1969) showing included having a pair of visiting US executives par-boiled inside it at Lang Lang when the roof mechanism failed (someone broke the Perspex with a hammer!); incredibly it vanished from GMH custody, spent years in a private collection and was later donated to an SA TAFE where (unbelievably!) apprentices practised their welding skills!
In 2006 Holden began a five-year program to restore the one and only Hurricane to its original condition. It returned to the public stage at the 2011 Motorclassica and now on display at the National Motor Museum in Birdswood, S.A. as part of their Holden Retrospective until December 2021.
LEFT: For all its futurism, the Hurricane did have some 1969 touches. Check the steering wheel and instrument graphics!