Car of the Year was the Disaster of the Decade | Drive Flashback

In 1982 Wheels magazine bestowed its illustrious Car of the Year award to the Holden Camira. It was dead wrong, wrote Tony Davis in 1997.

Story by Tony Davis originally published in Drive on 7 March, 1997.

When Wheels magazine made it the 1982 Car of The Year, the public whacked down its hard-earned and Ford furiously began working on a copycat model. So how did the Holden Camira – GM-H’s first front-drive local car – become one of the company’s worst failures?

Let’s dissect the paragraph: the press raved for the wrong reasons, the wrong people bought the car (that is, they were Holden Commodore rather than Falcon buyers) and Ford Australia realised the “family four” was the wrong approach and abandoned its “me-too” plans.

Camira, an Aboriginal word for “soft wind”, was the Aussie-fied version of GM’s world car – a front-drive four-cylinder with a 1.6-litre engine and both sedan and wagon body styles.

A spacious interior and good fuel economy made it seem ideal for the fuel crisis of the early 1980s. But there was a fuel glut on the way and Camira had numerous problems of its own making.

Its dramatically free-revving engine and magnificent high-speed handling inspired motoring journalists to gush. But buyers were more interested in why it was so badly put together, why every interior component rattled or squeaked, and why it was necessary to keep taking the car back for warranty work.

Holden’s further problem was that the Commodore and Camira were styled similarly and were perceived as being roughly the same size. Almost every single person who purchased a Camira bought it instead of the dearer Commodore, so Holden stylists were told to making the Commodore look bigger and the Camira smaller.

Falcon sales didn’t miss a beat.

A more torquey 1.8-litre JD Camira and an even better 2.0-litre JE followed. By then the Camira was much better built, more distinctive in appearance, easier to drive and much more refined. But the damage had been done.

GM-H had boasted the Camira would become Australia’s best-selling car. Sales fell as low as 10,000 a year. GM-H closed the line, killed the name and stuck Holden Apollo badges on a little-changed Toyota Camry.

The post Car of the Year was the Disaster of the Decade | Drive Flashback appeared first on Drive.

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