The greatest Australian coupes | Drive Flashback

While not unique to our country, Aussie carmakers did master the art of turning a bog-standard family sedan into a racy two-door tourer. Here are some of our best.

In 2015, Drive’s Tony Davis looked back on some of the greats of Australia’s love-affair with sedan-based coupes.

Invented by

Someone a long, long time ago.

Spinning a racy two-door off the everyday sedan, primarily for the purposes of charging more, goes back at least to the Australian Six tourer. It had a coupe derivative around 1920.

Holden, before it made complete cars, put some nifty two-door bodies on 1930s GM chassis. But it was from the late 1960s that the local market went truly coupe mad.

Great moments

Where to start?

If we stick to the mainstream, sedan-based models, let’s cite the Valiant Charger, the only example to outsell its sedan equivalent, indeed the car that kept Valiant alive during the early 1970s.

And the reborn Holden Monaro (2001), for defying the odds.

Low points

This one goes to a Valiant too.

Parallel with Charger, for a reason not even the most advanced alien life force could hope to understand, Chrysler Australia built the Hardtop. It was flabby and mis-proportioned, even longer than the gargantuan VH Valiant sedan, yet had a horribly cramped cabin.

An upmarket Chrysler by Chrysler version was offered too. It was even less popular. Ultra-rare coupes are often valuable. Not this one.

The background

The first of Australia’s Big Three to offer a coupe of their volume model was Ford, using imported panels for its Falcon Hardtop of 1964-65.

The third was Chrysler, using Dodge Dart panels to make a Valiant VF hardtop.

In between, Holden completely upped the ante with the all-Aussie Monaro of 1968. The range included the fastest Holden of all, the GTS 327, which would win Bathurst that year.

Cheaper versions still gave buyers the sexy bodywork, though any attempt to gain advantage with said sexy bodywork could be seen as acting under false pretences if you had the 2.6-litre six and three-on-the-tree gearbox.

There is a usual sales trajectory for a speciality model.

Year one: pay a big deposit and we’ll put you on the waiting list; year two: availability is good, we’ll even allow you to choose your colour; year three: we’ve added extra equipment and cut the price. Hello! I said hello!

So it was with the Monaro, yet Holden surprised by also producing a coupe version of the HQ series in 1971.

‘Twas overshadowed by Chrysler Australia’s Charger, which was launched in the same year and was the company’s main track weapon (GM packaged Monaro more as a grand tourer).

In 1972 Ford Australia produced its first locally designed coupe: the XA series Hardtop. There was even a luxury LTD version known as Landau.

The fuel crisis of 1973-1974 quadrupled the price of oil. Big coupes, suddenly seen as selfish, became box-office poison.

Although the party was clearly over, Leyland was still trying to rush its P76 coupe, the Force 7, to market. It didn’t get there.

Development on the Big Three’s coupes stopped. By 1978 they’d all been phased out, presumably never to return.

Who wanted a big car with enormous doors and tiny interiors anyway?

Australians, that’s who! Against every long-term trend – and possibly against common and financial sense as well – there was one last hurrah.

The Commodore-based Concept Coupe, unveiled to rapturous applause during Holden’s 50th Anniversary in 1998, made production as the 2001 Holden Monaro. It went on sale in the US as the Pontiac GTO three years later, though sales were disappointing, and production was halted in 2006.

Latest trends

Sadly, the Australian car industry’s future is somewhere between bleak and non-existent.

There will always be super-low volume specials, but the chance of seeing another mainstream local coupe could only rest with some new technology.

A 3D printed 21st-century Valiant Charger anyone?

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