In Search of the Holden Piazza: An Overpriced Understatement
By Joe Kremzer and Chris Warr
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In Search of the Holden Piazza - Joe Kremzer
In Search of the
Holden Piazza
In Search of the
Holden Piazza
Chris Warr
&
Joe Kremzer
First published in 2006
Copyright © Chris Warr & Joe Kremzer 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Warr, Chris.
In search of the Holden Piazza.
ISBN 9781741146301.
ISBN 174114 630 5.
1. Holden automobiles - History. 2. Automobiles -
Australia - History. I. Kremzer, Joe. II. Title.
629.2222
Set in 11/15 pt Rotis by Bookhouse, Sydney
Printed by in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
About the authors
Acknowledgements
Authors’ note
Introduction
1 ‘Piazza is a penthouse of pleasure and performance.’
2 ‘Piazza. Even its Italian name quickens your pulse.’
3 ‘The driver’s seat alone is a miracle.’
4 ‘When you’ve settled in the seat, you behold an eye-filling array.’
5 ‘Holden Piazza. The name says it all.’
6 ‘Take a fast, sweeping curve and you discover this is no boulevarde show-car.’
7 ‘Piazza is fully imported, in limited numbers, and unusual in more ways than one.’
8 ‘Your adrenalin really flows when you turn the ignition key.’
9 ‘Piazza—an overpriced understatement.’
10 ‘The driver is confronted by no fewer than 20 warning and function lights, all of them easy to interpret.’
11 ‘Just sitting in it is pure pleasure.’
12 ‘Driving it is a dimension beyond pleasure.’
13 ‘The vision of it standing, aloof and alive, in your driveway.’
14 ‘Holden Piazza abounds with temptations.’
15 ‘Inspired
is one of the few adequate descriptions of the Piazza.’
Epilogue: ‘Maybe the word isn’t ‘inspired’.Perhaps it’s genius.’
Appendix 1: Holden Piazza Technical Details
Appendix 2: RACT Inspection Report
Appendix 3: Australia’s Piazzas
Appendix 4: Alliterated West Indian Test Cricketers
About the authors
Christopher Michael Warr
Chris was born in Hobart on 21 August 1978 and after convincing himself he wasn’t a factory reject (as purported by his brother and sister), enjoyed his childhood and time at school.
Never wavering from his burning desire to become a leading sports journalist, Chris studied economics and found himself working for Tasmania’s Department of Treasury and Finance—where he reads the sports pages of the newspapers with unbridled enthusiasm. While Chris may not have ended up writing about sport, he sure has tried playing a lot of it. Often changing sports year to year, Chris would follow announcements of retirement from one sport with bold statements of his intentions of taking up another. Until someone quietly pointed out that only champions retire, crap people give up.
Chris also harbours an unhealthy obsession with Neil Finn, the only person he would want at a candlelit dinner party . . . fictitious or real. He is also the singer-songwriting component of The Vacationers, a band who’s meteoric rise from humble weekly beginnings in Chris’s bedroom has seen them move into Chris’s lounge room where they continue to perform on a fortnightly basis.
Chris currently drives a 1991 Ford Corsair with a pin stripe, a model most likely to be seen in bowls club car parks around the country (sans stripe).
Most importantly, it should be noted that Chris and Joe once had a dismal beard-growing contest while surviving earthquakes and skiing in New Zealand. With a week’s head start Joe won easily; however, it was definitely not a win for proponents of hirsute people in general.
Jozef (Joe) Stanislaw Kremzer
Joe was born in Hobart on 15 August 1978, and spent his formative years in the working class suburb of Claremont. Surrounded by tyre-less Geminis on blocks, kids with rat’s tails and chain-smoking mothers in unfeasibly tight denim, Joe explored a number of undertakings—sporting, creative and academic—in order to find his place in the world.
For a while Joe thought his future might lie in physiotherapy, but, after almost passing out whilst observing a varicose vein removal, he soon realised he was destined for the public service. Content to leave the high-flying world of sports care and accident rehabilitation to those of more rigid constitutions, Joe took shelter in the bloodless world of Treasury and Finance.
Juggling a full-time career and a passion for obscure lowlights in Australian motoring history isn’t easy. Everyone knows about the Leyland P76 and the 1990s Ford Capri, but it takes true passion and commitment to unearth the finer points of such true showroom dreams as Holden’s Scurry, Drover and of course the ubiquitous Piazza.
Joe fled the Treasury after six years, but found it hard to leave the public service and get a job in the real world, and so he took up energy policy positions with various state governments. In his precious spare time Joe enjoys watching B-grade movies and television, reading, playing hockey and pursuing dreams of escaping the mindless drudgery of the bureaucracy for a life of rock and roll, playing bass with The Vacationers and anyone else who will let him jam with them.
Joe has fulsome sideburns and, contrary to some reports, is able to grow a proud and bushy beard when required.
To see photos from the Piazza quest go to
<www.piazzasearch.com>.
Acknowledgements
The biggest thanks for this book goes to Scott Harthen who provided endless assistance to us from the night we drunkenly raised the concept with him right through to organising meetings for us at Holden and procuring the odd Monaro for us to drive. Thanks also to Tom Rundle whose expert web design skills, time and patience enabled us to contact, keep in contact with, and be contacted by Piazza owners, media and friends. Scotty Mac, thanks for helping us find Alyce. Immense cheers to Peter Lockley for his mechanical expertise, ensuring that Alyce was ready and raring to go for our trip. To Cary Young and his wife Lyn, thank you for your amazingly generous hospitality and assistance. Without Cary and his incredible achievements on ‘Sale of the Century’, it’s likely this book may never have been written.
Obviously a massive thank you to all the wonderful Piazza owners who were so generous with their time and told us about their cars and their lives. Thanks also to Rach and Zane, Greg Goodwin, David Rose and Jennifer McKenzie from RACT, Peter Hellier, Judith Lucy and all at Fox FM, Lynn Hawkes and everyone at the ABC Hobart, and ABC local radio around Australia.
Thank you to all at Holden who provided valuable information and assistance to us from day one.
Thanks to Scott, Tom, Kate, Axe, Jen, Prong, Marcus, Webbs, Clarkey, Mikey C, Esther, Ryan, Belinda, Drum, Hilary, Jason, Sandra, Garath and Danni for their amazing hospitality along the way—we were never short of a beer and bed, couch or piece of carpet to sleep on. Eternal thanks to our families, friends and long-suffering girlfriends Megan and Danni.
We would like to thank the original Holden Piazza sales brochure for so eloquently providing the chapter titles for our book.
Huge thanks to Jo Paul, Lauren Finger and Catherine Milne and the rest of the team at Allen & Unwin for helping us belt this shambles into shape.
Finally, we wish to express our gratitude to those who undertook similarly indulgent and ridiculous quests before us, providing inspiration and evidence that alcohol and stupidity can actually produce something, albeit something that is not necessarily important—Dave Gorman, Danny Wallace, Tony Hawks, we owe you a beer.
Authors’ note
We would like to briefly point out how much of a burden it was to be responsible for uncovering what happened to the Holden Piazza. So much so that it took two of us to undertake the journey around Australia and write this book. Just so that the people appearing in this book can work out which one of us to sue for libel, we have made it easy for you. I, Chris, will write in this font.
I guess that means that I, Joe . . . you get the idea.
While some details in the following pages may have been fudged when the facts were a little blurred due to fatigue and/or inebriation, all the stories are true (except of course those which make our family, partners, friends and employers a little ashamed to know us).
Introduction
‘Okay, now as we head to fast money, Cary is on $90, Gwen is sitting on $45 and Simon is on $65, 60 seconds on the clock . . . your time starts now. Which country’s currency is the zloty . . .’ The unmistakeable Tony Barber.
‘Er, Poland.’
I was eight, it was 1986, and in lounge rooms around the country Australians were glued to their TV sets watching the ostensibly unbeatable Cary Young compete on ‘Sale of the Century’, the world’s richest quiz. Sure it was exciting, with the bright lights, the seemingly impossible questions, the ‘famous faces’ and, while I probably hadn’t worked it out yet, the rather saucy Alyce Platt. But for me, the highlight would come at the end of the show.
Cary cruised home to win by $55. Gwen and Simon graciously accepted their hideous, and hideously overvalued, consolation diamond memento stickpins and Cary went ‘shopping’.
There in the showroom, amongst other equally shiny prizes, was what I had been eagerly waiting for, a brand new Holden Piazza.
Meanwhile, in a lounge room elsewhere in the sleepy little island state of Tasmania, I was cheering on the great man as he strove for victory. There was a lot at stake for Cary: the ‘Sale’ World Championship, a handsome array of prizes and a cash jackpot. But as far as this buck-toothed, bowl-cut sporting 8-year-old was concerned, the Titan of Trivia had achieved so much more than ultimate victory on Australia’s richest game show— Cary Young, the world’s greatest quiz master, had just earned the right to drive away in a brand new black Holden Piazza.
As a child growing up in Hobart’s northern suburbs, I had little choice but to be a car nut. Bathurst was our Mecca and the deity we worshipped was called Brock. The only problem was that I was a geek. I knew nothing about cars except that black ones looked cool although red ones always went faster. As the saying goes, I didn’t know art, but I knew what I liked. I figured that the same applied to cars. I took one look at the Piazza and I knew that one day I would drive one. It was black, a definite plus, a Holden, so my mates would approve, and did someone say turbo? I had no idea what that was, but it made it go faster, right?
Sadly, however, when I told my friends about the example of automotive genius that would one day be mine, most were unenthusiastic, at best, or had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
I lived with the hidden shame of being a Piazza lover for nearly a decade until fate and apathy led me into the Tasmanian public service at the same time as a young man named Chris, my friend and co-author, or if you will, the charming and charismatic Tony Barber to my stylish and oh-so-sexy Alyce.
Since we started on a cadetship program with the Department of Treasury and Finance some years ago, Chris and I have been flatmates, shared the success of the ‘Norms’ 6th grade touch football team, taken the odd ill-advised skiing holiday to earthquake prone parts of the world, and shared dreams of rock and roll fame. And while we have a lot in common, one trait stands out—we are both keen enthusiasts of pointless crap (the technical term is ‘spermologist’, but that just sounds plain wrong). Many a night has been spent at the pub discussing some of the most useless facts known to man. Which may go some way to explaining our limited luck with the ladies . . .
Classic topics for discussion have included the post-1927 career of Oz Rocker Eric Weideman, the Blakeney twins, and the old stalwart, the alliterated names of West Indian test cricketers (see Appendix 4). Trying to think of them all, from Barrington Browne through Corey Collymore and Cameron Cuffy right up to the great Sven ‘Conrad’ Stayers, once got us most of the way through a road trip from Melbourne to Adelaide.
Although not everyone is keen to join in these rather specialised conversations, one topic that is guaranteed to get people talking is ‘Sale of the Century’. Debate has raged as to whether or not Nikki Buckley should have been hosting while heavily pregnant (for the record the authors always supported Nikki on this one), or who was the greatest Champion of Champions (no guessing who got our vote), and there was one rather heated discussion on the merits of picking the home viewer on the fame game board.
Of course, it was ‘Sale’ that brought us together. When the words ‘Sale of the Century’ were first uttered at a public service morning tea, I was shocked when Chris, the other dazed and confused looking new starter, echoed my call to arms for the Holden Piazza. We were in turn greeted with blank stares from our fellow public servants in the room. The awkward silence eventually broken by a chorus of ‘Holden what??!!’. But my spirits would not be dampened; I recognised that in Chris I had at last found a man who shared my dream.
For those new to the Holden Piazza or requiring a brush up, here’s a quick primer:
The Holden Piazza was released in Australia by General-Motors Holden Ltd, as its pride-and-joy sports car, on April Fools’ Day 1986. Dodgy internet research reveals that around 300 new Holden Piazzas were sold in Australia between 1986 and 1987. Even dodgier internet research (discretion is required when searching on-line for information on cars, especially the Ford Probe) suggests that less than 80 are still driving on (or permanently parked near) Australian roads today.
The Holden Piazza was designed by Italy’s Giorgetto Giugiaro. Giugiaro had been experimenting with variations of a wedge-shaped vehicle (following the heralded yet strangely unconfirmed success of his design of a triangular doorstop in the 1950s). By the late 1970s a highly acclaimed prototype named the ‘Ace of Clubs’, was to become the Isuzu Piazza—later to be unleashed on the unsuspecting Australian public as the Holden Piazza (Giugiario apparently named a number of his designs after playing cards—some critics might sugget that the Joker would have been a more appropriate moniker for the Piazza).
The Piazza came to our shores with a prohibitive price tag of nearly $35 000—roughly the price of two Holden Commodores with a Barina thrown in for good measure. However, your money did get you an extraordinary number of added features for the time. These included, but were by no means limited to, contoured velour seats with an inordinate number of adjustable lumbar thingies, electronic digital instrumentation, cruise control, four-speaker stereo cassette with a seven-band graphic equaliser, an airconditioner featuring a fancy climate control lever, and power windows, steering, mirrors and door locks. The Holden sales brochure which accompanied the Piazza’s launch summed up the sumptuous interior: ‘Just sitting in it is pure pleasure. Driving it is a dimension beyond pleasure.’
Powering this ‘dimension beyond pleasure’ was a 2-litre turbo engine which Holden declared on a race circuit ‘could propel you through five silky gears, all the way up to 200 km/h, with dazzling acceleration all the way.’
But despite the aerodynamics, the inviting interior and the powerful performance, the Piazza had a somewhat troubled introduction onto the local motoring scene. Much maligned, it was held back by its exorbitant cost, a suspension system not suited to Australian speed humps and a competitive market filled with a plethora of classy wedge-bonneted sports cars.
Not surprisingly the Holden Piazza was soon forgotton by the motoring public. Until that fateful department morning tea brought back hidden memories of Cary Young’s shiny new black Piazza glittering away on the ‘Sale’ showroom floor. As is the way with great adventures, Chris and I didn’t know at the time that something signficant was about to happen . . .
Fast forward to New Year’s Eve, nearly five years after Joe and I had first discovered our mutual admiration for the forgotten. A few drinks and talk (obviously amongst the really cool people of the party) invariably turned to the Holden Piazza.
One drink led to another, which in turn led to some interesting cocktails, and before we had seen in the New Year the quest had begun.
‘Let’s go in search of the Holden Piazza,’ I said to Joe. ‘Let’s go in search of the Holden Piazza in a Holden Piazza.’
‘Of course,’ slurred Joe. Normally my friend’s vocabulary after a few beverages consists chiefly of the phrases ‘I love you mate’ and ‘Have a go arsehole’, so this clearly articulated response was proof enough for me that this was something we would both remember in the morning.
Under the influence it all seemed so clear and simple. Joe and I would track down the few remaining Holden Piazzas, meet their owners and traverse our beautiful country in between. However, in reality, a few minor details had to be dealt with before we could go in search of Piazzas in our very own Piazza—firstly, we had to get one.
Owners of the wedged beauty weren’t going to take us seriously if we rocked up in a Leyland P76, a Lada Niva, a Nissan Junior or even a Holden Scurry. We had to be driving our own example of the most exotic of Australian motoring flops, the Holden Piazza. This, however, posed something of a problem. Buying a Piazza wasn’t as easy as we first thought— they are difficult enough to find throughout Australia without limiting our search to Tasmania.
Still, Tasmania was as good a place to start as any and it had come to our attention that a Holden Piazza lurked close by in a Hobart wreckers. The excitement was palpable as we turned into the car park of the wreckers—Joe and I had never before been so close to a Piazza in the flesh. The manager, who appeared somewhat bemused by our quest, led us through a maze of interconnected sheds before pointing us to a rickety stand-alone corrugated iron structure near the back of the yard. Here we found a white Piazza sitting under what looked to be years of dust and grime and an assortment of parts.
What stood out most to Joe and I at this first Piazza meeting was just how well the style and shape of the car had fared in the preceding two decades. Sitting low to the ground, the two-door coupe was a picture of sleek aerodynamics. We forced open the large low-slung doors and hopped inside for a closer look. We were instantly struck by the smart-looking dashboard and surrounds. Along with the array of buttons, dials and thingamabobs we also noticed how roomy the cabin was. Reminiscent of Dr Who’s Tardis, inside the Piazza had ample leg room even for the tallest of drivers and plentiful interior space to delay the onset of cabin fever on those long drives.
Well, we thought the Piazza was roomy but quickly discovered that the front seats had been removed and Joe and I were in fact sitting in the back seat. Once the excitement of seeing our first Piazza had worn off we were able to identify a few other anomalies. Closer inspection revealed that the low profile of the car was actually the result of all four wheels being missing and that the engine and gearbox had also been removed. These omissions meant that Joe and I quickly abandoned any preposterous thoughts that we may have previously had of tightening some bolts, adding some oil and driving that Piazza right on out of the yard and into the sunset.
With the white Piazza unable to meet the strict cirteria we