Frankie J Holden and his Holden

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After writing my last post about the closure of the factory that made Holden cars, I was sorting out some books and came across ‘It Happened in a Holden’. The book was published in 2014 and contains dozens of short articles and stories from various people about different Holdens that they had owned and loved. I flicked it open at an article by Frankie J Holden. Frankie was an Australian entertainer and, when he first went into show business, he wanted a quintessential, larrikin-type, unmistakeably Australian name. The FJ Holden was being manufactured at the time so Frankie J Holden he became. He also thought it appropriate as he believed he had been conceived in the back of one of these cars. Many years later, when he was interviewed on ‘This is Your Life’ and was recounting this story, his mother interrupted him saying ‘it wasn’t a Holden. It was a Packard’. At the time of the printing of the book, Frankie still had a Holden and waxed lyrical about it. He will be another lamenting the closure of the factory.