Holden dealer-delivered Camaros

“The Americans know it as ‘The Hugger’.”

That was how Bill Patterson Motors introduced the Chevrolet Camaro to potential buyers in its print advert in 1967. The sporty new American coupe wasn’t a part of GM-H’s model range (of course, Holden at that time was gearing up for the release of a V8-powered sporty coupe of its own, in the HK Monaro), but if you hankered for a ‘Hugger’, you could get one from a handful of Holden dealers such as Bill Patterson – and, remarkably, only a matter of months after the Camaro first went on sale in the USA.

Of course, the Camaros that arrived down under in the late ’60s were in original American left-hand drive form, and had to be converted to right-hand drive as per local laws. This was no great problem, because the practice of converting imported American cars in Australia was not new. As the feature story that follows in this issue outlines, there was no shortage of independent mechanical workshops in the ‘LHD to RHD’ game, especially in the big capital cities. This is common knowledge.