Drive Flashback: In 1960, one in every two new cars sold was a Holden

Every decade or so, automotive design trends reach their logical conclusion and cars suddenly stop getting squarer and squarer, or lower and lower, or curvier and curvier. Everyone catches a different wave, and last month’s must-have styling gimmick becomes this month’s cringing embarrassment.

It featured a dome roof, a dogleg windscreen, sharp brutal fins at the rear, headlight ‘eyebrows’, chrome strips running in every direction along the sides and that wonderfully stupid mid-1950s innovation: silver thread trim.

Naturally people laughed at the FB and sales were dismal. Actually, come to think of it, they praised it and bought it unremittingly. Indeed GM-H officials could argue that, if the FB was a mistake, it was a fortuitous one. It enabled GM-H to maintain its extraordinary 50 per cent-plus share of the market.