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Edward Holden
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Sir Edward Wheewall Holden (14 August 1885 - 17 June 1947) was an Australian vehicle manufacturer. He is considered the father of the Australian car industry.
Edward Holden was born at College Town (now St. Peters), and educated at Prince Alfred College and the University of Adelaide (B.Sc., 1905). He joined the family firm Holden & Frost started by his father Henry James Holden (1859-1926). He was influential in Holden's expansion into motor-body building, and its use of highly automated mass production technology.
He introduced to the business new standards of scientific management, cost accounting and production control.
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Sir Edward Wheewall Holden (14 August 1885 - 17 June 1947) was an Australian vehicle manufacturer. He is considered the father of the Australian car industry.
Edward Holden was born at College Town (now St. Peters), and educated at Prince Alfred College and the University of Adelaide (B.Sc., 1905). He joined the family firm Holden & Frost started by his father Henry James Holden (1859-1926). He was influential in Holden's expansion into motor-body building, and its use of highly automated mass production technology.
He introduced to the business new standards of scientific management, cost accounting and production control. In close association with General Motors Export Co.(General Motors), the American-owned firm to which it was already supplying car-bodies, Holden's established a dominant market position throughout mainland Australia. By 1929 the company employed 3,400 workers and was the biggest bodybuilder in the British Empire.
In October 1929 the plant closed temporarily for lack of continuous work, and in January 1930 Holden set out for the U.S.A. to discuss amalgamation with General Motors. In February 1931, General Motors offered £1,116,000 for Holden's. The offer was ultimately accepted. This reduced the cash burden of the merger for General Motors, and also gave it complete control while maintaining an Australian character in name, ownership and management.
Holden became chairman of General Motors-Holden's Ltd, and was appointed joint managing director in August 1931 and later sole managing director. However, he was supplanted as managing director in 1934 by Laurence Hartnett. He then turned to other business activities and parliamentary service. He became honorary Controller-General of Army Canteens in 1939-45 and visited troops in the Middle East. He remained chairman of directors of General Motors-Holden's until ill health forced his resignation in January 1947.
Edward Holden was also prominent in many South Australian enterprises: the South Australian Brush Co., Australian Cotton Textile Industries, the Bank of Adelaide, the Council of the University of Adelaide, the South Australian Industries Assistance Corporation, the South Australian Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber of Manufactures, the Associated Chambers of Manufactures of Australia, the National Safety Council, and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.
He was elected as a councillor and alderman of the Adelaide City Council, and to the South Australian Legislative Council representing the Liberal Party of Australia.
In the New Year's Honours List of 1946, he was created a Knight bachelor.
Holden died in North Adelaide of cerebro-vascular disease on 17 June 1947. He was survived by his wife Hilda May (née Lavis), a son and two daughters. One of those daughters was Senator Dame Nancy Buttfield, the first woman to represent South Australia in the Parliament of Australia.
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