Holden Hurricane

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Holden Hurricane

The Holden Hurricane was made by Holden to see the feasibility of using aerospace techniques and materials for future models but in the end little came of the project. The only thing that came out of the project other than the one off concept was a 4.2L Holden V8, producing 259hp, that made it into over 500,000 production models. The Holden Hurricane was designed around a trend of low, wedges shaped cars like the Ferrari 512s Berlinetta Speciale, Maserati Boomerang, and the Bertone Stratos Concept. With the low wedge design the Holden engineers had to get creative with a way to get inside. The solution they came up with was a hydraulically lifted canopy that came up as one bug piece. To help with entering and exiting the steering wheel tucks away with the seat that rises up.

Other than styling, the Holden Hurricane was filled with technology that are seen as standard today with things like a backup camera, satellite navigation, climate control, and inertia seatbelts. The backup camera was attached to a black and white CRT TV, which was the best technology they were able to fit into a car at the time. The most impressive part of the technology was the satnav, which was still fairly new at the time. Satellites were mostly reserved for the military so what Holden used was magnets in the road that would help the computer in the car know where it was and where it was going so that it could give accurate directions. Other then the technology in the interior there were some cutting edge technology for the time with things like oil cooled four wheel disk brakes, and foam-filled fuel cells, but these tended to fade into the back as they couldn't be seen from the drivers

After the 1969 Melbourne Motor Show, the Hurricane was kept by Holden and loaned out to dealers to show. In 1988, a man named Corey Egan found the Hurricane sitting in the Holden training center and wanted to do the full restoration himself. The managers at the time said that it should wait until the training center was fully cleaned out. This led to the Hurricane having only a partial restoration until the full restoration was approved in 2006. It took five years to do the full restoration but once finished in 2011 it was shown at Motorclassica classic car show, in Melbourne. After it was moved to the National Motor Museum, in Birdwood Australia, where it is on display to this day.