Makers
THE MAKERS
Meet the people who designed, engineered and built our cars and
learn the highs and lows of a career in the car industry.
I’m not going to shy away from this, but I had to go and see a psychiatrist in the end. After all those years working in the automotive sector, that was all I knew.
One of our neighbours used to work for Holden in Dandenong and he would basically drive home with a new car every day. We used to sit outside and wait for him to drive past.
I jacked up the ‘mule’, removed the wheel, and a section of brake disc rotor fell on the ground. I will never forget the look on the brake engineer’s face!
When I arrived home, I would see the dinner right in front of me moving across like an assembly line. It was a very weird feeling until you got used to it.
Autoliv helped a lot of young families achieve what they dreamed of, like owning a house and supporting your children.
They just said, ‘sit at this desk. Here is the General Motors Engine Test Book which has got the different engine tests we do. You need to understand all that, because everything we do is based around this manual.’
Chasing History is about the men and women who designed and assembled our cars and their components around Australia.
Know somebody who we should feature here?
We’re always looking for people involved in local car manufacturing and anyone can
nominate the people who brought Australian cars to life.
Our contributors
A special thanks to Cesare Di Stefano, Maria Vergel and Mario Turcarelli for providing the images you see in this section. Cesare kindly allowed us to use his photo taken during the assembly of a Tickford AU Falcon, Maria provided the group photo from her long stint at Autoliv, while many of the vintage Holden photos you see on this site are courtesy of long-time Holden employee, Mario Turcarelli.