In the late 1960's, Holden's first venture into the large luxury car market was the Brougham, and Richard Jefferay from the Central West Car Club has a beautiful example of an original unrestored one.
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It is a 1968 HK Holden Brougham with the original Inca Goldduco, luxurious cream brocade trim and plush carpets throughout.
In 1968, Ford already dominated the luxury sedan market with its Fairlane so in an immediate response, Holden simply extended the rear end of its existing Premier sedan adding an extra 8 inches to the boot on the same wheelbase.
This remained for 3 generations (HK, HT and HG) until the Statesman was introduced in 1971. The HK Brougham offered the 307 Chevrolet V8 with 2 speed powerglide transmission as the only drive-train and being a matching numbers vehicle, that's exactly what's powering Richard's HK.
"I've always had a passion for the HK/T/G Holdens since owning a ute as an apprentice," Richard said.
"I've got an HG wagon in the build and I rang Phil who owns the long defunct Holden dealership in Peak Hill to find a windscreen mould and he told me no, but he had an original Brougham with low kilometres."
Richard knew that it was worth a look and after uncovering it in the back of Phil's shed he knew he had to have it.
There was plenty of deliberating but eventually on a cold and wet July morning in 2020 with a team of helpers Richard said it took the best part of a day to finally extract it from the old workshop.
"It was covered in dust and bird poop and layers of cardboard, but that was the easy part.
"We had to shift racks of windscreens, shop counters and tyres and all sorts of stuff just to get in.
We moved Chevrolets and motorbikes and they all had flat tyres so we found a bicycle pump that was as old as the shop and got to work with it," Richard laughed.
Phil's dad had sold the Brougham brand new in 1968 from the O'Leary Holden dealership in Peak Hill.
It was traded back with just 11,000 miles on it so he kept it as his daily driver until finally hanging up the keys in 1982 and it sat in the back corner of the shed for 38 years since then.
It's still only got about 33,000 miles on it and Richard has done an amazing job of servicing it, detailing it and replacing a few parts to now have it proudly back on the road.
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