HQ panelvan 2

My second HQ panelvan was originally a NZ Police telecom van. It was 202 with manual trans.

This vehicle was great! Finally I had the panelvan I wanted for traveling and sleeping in. I did a few circuits of the South Island and many runs into Central Otago.

I met this guy with some old Holdens; FX and FJ sedans  and an FC ute. I took a fancy to the ute and did a swap for the panel van. The FC ute story is the next post. After a couple of years I began to miss the traveling qualities of the panelvan and sought to swap it back. We did and I had a happy second ownership of my HQ. It came back to me lowered at the front, shod with mags and fat tyres and a rear sway bar installed. For the next few years I made good use of the road friendly campervan. Eventually, in one of those "why did I do that?" moments I sold it cheap for cash.

HQ ute

Generic HQ ute

Not a Holden.

I returned to NZ in the mid eighties and bought an HQ ute. It was white with a pinstripe, had hotwire mags and the whole front exterior was changed at some point to HJ - Nosecone, guards, bonnet. It also had a canopy and so made a useful panelvan substitute for road trips.

I have no photo of this vehicle.

It was put up for sale when I bought a 38 V8 Ford pick up.

HQ panelvan 1

I was desperate for something and I had been for years. I wasn't sex, it was a Holden panel van, which I thought of as pretty much the same thing.

I bought this HQ with it's flashy stripes, fat wheels and smokey 253 from a dealer, signing away my soul and peace of mind to a finance company.

The engine fumed up the vehicle's interior terribly. I couldn't drive anywhere without the window open. I did a couple of trips and as in the photo parked backwards at the drive in movie with my mates. But it never was the fuck truck that my imagination promised. When I finally sold it I was relieved. The finance company is probably still looking for me.

First Holdens

I've had this obsession since an early age. Some of my earliest memories were of the company car that my father drove, an FB wagon like the one above.

His next car was a pale yellow HT sedan. Same colour as the one above.

Then came his HQ. It was a burnt umber coloured sedan sort of like the one pictured above. This was in the mid seventies. I started driving around the town I lived when I was 14 and by the time I was 16 my father had a hard time getting his car off me.