Articles by Warren Brown

To a large extent the reason American automotive companies General Motors, Ford and Chrysler - once known in Australia as ''The Big Three'' - thrived so well in Australia was because American driving conditions were much like ours where huge distances needed to be covered over appalling roads.Unlike British automotive manufacturers who were busy building small four-cylinder, four-speed cars suitable for puttering around the Cotswolds, American car makers had their eyes fixed on developing countries like Australia where motorists were crying out for a powerful six-cylinder car with a lazy three-speed gearbox suitable for a long outback drive.It's no wonder American manufacturers wanted to set up factories in Australia. For three consecutive years during the 1920s Australia was the biggest export market for the US. Why wouldn't you build a car in Australia?From the moment the first locally made General Motors Holden's car - the 48/215 - rolled off the brand-new Australian production line in 1948 we embraced an Australo-American-style of motoring for the next 30 years. In time the six-cylinder found under the bonnet of a garden-variety Holden or Ford Falcon grew a bit more into a range of brutal, thirsty V8s fuelling the emergence of a uniquelyAustralian tribal culture whereby families swore Civil War-style blood-oaths to champion either Holden or Ford. But the mid 1970s saw very real threats to the Australian car industry - spiraling inflation, a global oil crisis and the introduction of new safety compliance rules coupled with drastic exhaust emission controls placed whopping pressure on local car manufacturers.On top of that Australian motorists were now warming to smaller, cheaper Japanese imports. GMH was in trouble. In 1976 a new management team arrived headed by Minnesota born Chuck Chapman, chief engineer for General Motors' German subsidiary Opel. Chapman, used to piloting less powerful but better handling European cars, took one drive of the locally built Australian product and embarked on an automotive jihad to fix the lousy ability for the Kingswood to do everyday things - like turn a corner or stop.It was time to introduce the sort of European technology few Australians had experienced - rack and pinion steering and Macpherson strut suspension - that continental car manufacturers had been employing since WWII.Further it was time to replace the old billiard-table sized Kingswood with something more compact, more efficient, more stylish - more European - so GMH experimented with a hybrid of two popular German General Motors cars - the Opel Rekord and Senator.It took some time to get it right. The Rekord when thrashed on outback roads had a tendency to break in half and the whole project would regularly return to the drawing board requiring considerable beefing-up for Australian conditions.In the end GMH got it right. The gamble to upgrade and modernise the Holden sedan proved a quantum leap.The arrival of the VB Commodore in 1978 was heralded in ads as ''world class''. And for an Australian car it was, being awarded Wheels magazine's car of the year and praised for it's value for money, ride quality and handling - all things we weren't terribly familiar with back then.Despite the occasional hiccup the Commodore has reigned as the company's undisputed flagship, but in 2013 our motoring tastes have changed. Today's Commodore still presents astonishing value but Australians no longer have the hard-wired urge to own a big six or eight cylinder sedan.Where once TV ads for Holden cars showed a family-filled Commodore belting along a bush track, today's advertisements depict Australians as aspirational, funky city dwellers grooving from the gym to a café to a nightclub in a car a third of the size.As we know, the Holden Commodore's American parent has all but scuppered it with the announcement General Motors will shut-up shop in Australia. And the release of sales figures this week announcing 2013 as being the Holden's worst-ever year - the mighty Commodore slipping some 9 per cent in 2013 - justifies their decision. Chuck Chapman, the Commodore's overseer, never saw the demise of his creation - he passed away on December 18, 2012.

Australia's motoring culture has evolved in much the same way as our native fauna. For more than a century, thousands of kilometres away from anywhere, the Australian automotive experience has developed into a quirky phenomenon unlike anywhere else in the world.And there is nowhere else like Sydney, where every day motorists are neatly pigeon-holed into specific tribes. Do you belong to any of these tribes identified by our resident motoring enthusiast WARREN BROWN?SYDNEY CABBIEWhere? Authoritative driver who can describe to you some of the world's great shortcuts from Belarus to Baluchistan but has little idea of the whereabouts of Sydney Town Hall.In London, cab drivers have "The Knowledge" - in Sydney they have the Navman. All taxi drivers are unnervingly comfortable with solving the Gillard government's problems while sitting on a seat cover comprised of wooden beads as big as golf balls.In the deluxe variety of taxi you can inhale the exotic cherry aroma of an Ambi-Pur air freshener. Heaven.B-DOUBLERoad Train Lite. Someone in government thought it was okay to spice up the traffic by allowing something with 26 wheels, weighing 30 tonnes and capable of travelling 110km/h to mingle with the rest of us. The best place to sit back and watch your life flash before your eyes is in the M5 tunnel, somewhere between Kenworth and Mack.PUBLIC BUSEar-splittingly loud, alarmingly quick off the mark, these gargantuan people-movers are bright blue blood clots on the CBD's arteries. Amazingly, they can simultaneously bring traffic to a standstill yet still attain phenomenal speeds. All government buses are piloted by Michael Schumacher.M5 RESIDENTThis motorist's miserable existence is played out in purgatory somewhere between The River Rd turnoff and King Georges Rd where daily, the best parts of their lives are whittled away in gridlock. On the bright side, it's one of the few places you can relax and read the complete works of Tolstoy or James Joyce in one sitting.HIGHWAY PATROLIf the road was an ocean and cars were fish, then the Highway Patrol Commodore is the great white shark lurking out there somewhere, ready to roll its eyes back and attack. Guaranteed to strike terror into any motorist on the move. As with sharks, it's the one you don't see you need to worry about.SCHOOL MUMWhere Volvo station wagons were once the cattle truck of choice, schoolkids are now compressed into more street-cred SUVs and CRVs and other vehicles denoted only by a combination of three letters.DOOF DOOFDecibels over horsepower. The hopeful adolescent attention-seeker out to win over the opposite sex by making their ears bleed. The value of the car is inversely proportional to the cost of the sound system. Even though the owner has a season pass for Summernats, in reality he knows his way around JB Hi Fi a lot better than Supercheap Auto. What? Did you say something? I can't hear you.THE TEXTERIt's an extraordinary feat of 21st century human achievement to be able to text while manoeuvring a ton of rolling metal through Sydney's unpredictable traffic without killing someone. All it takes is one eye on the road, one eye on your iPhone and one eye on the lookout for a good lawyer when the coppers bust you in the act.MONSTER 4WDMore insectivorous than automotive, these are one of the few species of modern cars owners can "fiddle with".The greater the suspension, the greater the wheels, the greater the tyres, the greater the pain in the bum they are to everyone else on the road. Still, you never know when you need to drive over a boulder on Sydney's roads.CLOVER MOORE CYCLISTExtremely rare but consistently arrogant when found.Blind to children, obnoxious to pedestrians, foulmouthed to motorists - probably a result of carrying an enormous chip on the shoulder while pedalling along the putt-putt golf-style thoroughfare that is the cycleway.There are exceptions of course, but belligerence is de rigeur for the inner-city pedaller.TRADIE'S VANCommanded by self-employed millionaire gyprockers/ housepainters/plumbers/chippies/sparkies, all tradie's vans originate solely from the Sutherland Shire. Adorned with mysterious over-length PVC tubing that could contain anything from curtain rods to a rocket launcher.Inside is a cordless worksite Makita radio with the tuning dial Araldited to Jonesy and Amanda. 

Newspaper reports have this week suggested that Top Gear Australia has racked up a significant figure in car repair bills as a result of "eager driving" and "wild and silly stunts".