https://www.nfsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-12/354298_1006%20Don%27t%20Ask%20poster_1000x745%20px.jpg
General Motors Holden: Monaro, 'More than just transportation'
Title:
General Motors Holden: Monaro, 'More than just transportation'
NFSA ID
411143
Year
1968
Courtesy
General Motors Holden
This advertisement for the Holden Monaro HK begins on the racetrack amongst sleek sports cars, champion drivers (including Norm Beechey) and adoring female fans. A sequence of still images of foreign sports cars and sophisticated young consumers enjoying leisure activities sets up the demand for a car which looks and handles like a foreign sports car, but comes at a cheaper price. Over shots of headlights on a road at night, the voice-over states that such a car has not been available until now but the advertisement ends without revealing more.
This clip cleverly builds a case for the Holden Monaro based on its capacity to fulfil the spectrum of needs and desires of its target market, typified by tantalising images of young people enjoying a day at the racetrack. The commanding voice-over states 'this is where it’s happening’, 'today’s people are dynamic’, 'individuality is a living thing’ and 'it’s a winner’s world’ to create an image of the ideal Monaro driver – whose car is an 'extension of themselves’. The still images present a sports car as the necessary accessory for a lifestyle that is 'sporty, modern as tomorrow, sophisticated’. The narrator asserts that 'what this country needs right now’ is a car that combines practicality and comfort with the handling and performance of a sports car at an affordable price. The two threads of the narrative come together – but before the Monaro is revealed as the car that meets these requirements, the ad stops – leaving the viewer wanting more and primed for what is to come (see clip two).
This three-minute advertisement was taken from a compilation of Holden advertisements promoting the three new 1968 models: the Monaro, Monaro GTS, and Monaro GTS 327. In the compilation, the two segments come one after the other. While it is not possible to know for sure that the ads went to air in two parts, this is how they appear to be designed. The final 60 seconds which follows on from this ad shows the three new models in detail. It is the final pitch in a well marketed campaign.
Holden driver Norm Beechey also features on this site in Shell’s sponsored documentary Championship Chase (1970), in which he wins the Australian Touring Car Championship.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.