Parkes couple, Ian and Sandie Ward are the proud owners of this 1971 HQ Statesman which they purchased in 2010.

The HQ Statesman was the first to be released by Holden Australia in 1971 and was the successor to the Holden Brougham.

A bit of research reveals that the Statesman was produced as a rival to the Ford Fairlane which had dominated the market for Australian prestige cars.

In order to make the Holden Statesman marque more exclusive, the name Holden was deleted in marketing making their luxury sedan a Statesman by General Motors.

The Statesman was built on a longer wheelbase than the HQ sedan using the HQ station wagon wheelbase.

It offered two levels of specifications – the upmarket DeVille and the base model Custom which Ian and Sandie have.

Ian tells me that Holden only built 600 of these base model Statesmans which were originally built primarily to serve as taxis.

Theirs is a 202 cubic inch six cylinder with a three speed column shift manual transmission making it quite rare as most were built as automatics.

The history of Ian and Sandie’s car is that it was originally purchased by a car dealer in Melbourne for his personal use.

He kept it until he passed away and it was handed over to his brother-in-law who kept it on historic registration for club runs around Warragul.

When he moved house and had nowhere to store it he put it up for sale and that’s when Ian found it.

So it had been in the one family for 39 years with Ian and Sandie now being the third owners.

The car was, and still is, in original condition with the original vinyl roof and base model Statesman features.

Ian and Sandie are both members of the Central West Car Club which meets on the first Wednesday of each month at the Parkes Leagues Club.

You can find out more about the club at www.centralwestcarclub.com