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Celebrating 100 Years of General Motors in Australia… More Than a Car Company (Limited-Edition Hardcover)
The story of The General, told by one of its own Written by John Crennan
All information correct when published but may be subject to change due to circumstances beyond our control.
On 1 November 1926, General Motors was incorporated as an Australian company at City Road, South Melbourne. Shortly afterwards, about 120 head-office staff gathered out the front for a photograph. In the front row was a young man named Harry Crennan, who would serve the company for 42 years. A century later, his son John has written the book that celebrates what they all built.
Previous GM and Holden anniversary books put the cars at the centre: the design, the engineering, the manufacturing. This one takes another path. It tells the business and people stories of the company Australians affectionately called The General, across its three identities: General Motors Australia, General Motors-Holden and now GMSV.
Few people could have written it. John Crennan started as a 17-year-old fill-in mail boy at Fishermans Bend in December 1962 and spent 50 years under the lion flag, including 22 years leading Holden Special Vehicles and the Holden Racing Team. Two years in the making, the book draws on the extraordinary archive of General Motors, with permission to utilise GM imagery and marks. It gathers more than 2,000 stories, illustrated with more than 300 photographs across 260 pages, with a foreword by respected motoring publisher and commentator John Mellor.
This is a book for former employees and their families, dealer families, motor sport followers, and every Australian with a Holden somewhere in their story. It is an exclusive limited edition of 1,000 copies, printed in Melbourne, ahead of the centenary on 1 November.
The gift a Holden tragic won’t already own – once they’re gone, they’re gone.
Inside the book:
Australians bought 9,158,042 GM vehicles in 100 years. If one was yours, this story is partly yours.
- 2,000 inside revelations – drawn from the extraordinary archive of General Motors and the author’s own.
- The lines you still recite – “Holden. Australia’s Own Car” arrived in 1948, backed by a selling machine: 3,000 training conferences and 75,000 dealer staff trained in a single year by the 1960s.
- Find your town’s dealer – 667 localities and more than 1,600 dealer businesses, town by town. Look up the showroom your family bought from.
- Brock and The Great Race – motor sport decade by decade, written from inside HSV and the Holden Racing Team – not a spectator’s retelling of your Bathurst Sundays.
- Fifty years under the lion flag – from fill-in mail boy in 1962 to 22 years leading HSV, the Crennans giving The General 107 years of combined service. Written for everyone who was there.
- Were you at the Zoo? – December 1959: 9,548 children of GMH employees at the Christmas party at Melbourne Zoo. If your parents worked for The General, you may have been one of them. Inside stories about how The General looked after its staff and their families.
- One of only 1,000 – hardcover books, 260 pages, more than 300 photographs, printed in Melbourne, delivering from late September 2026.
Specifications:
- Format: exclusive limited edition of 1,000 – large-format hardcover coffee-table book
- Size: 309 mm x 251 mm x 20 mm
- Pages: 260, with more than 300 photographs (GM imagery and trade marks used with permission)
- Paper: Pacesetter Satin 170gsm cover; Pacesetter Satin 128gsm text
- Chapters: 16 chapters plus foreword, introduction and appendix
- Foreword: John Mellor
- ISBN: 978 1 922269 06 5
- Author: John Crennan
- Printed in Melbourne, Australia; deliveries from late September 2026
About the author:
John Crennan was interviewed at GMH the day after his final school exam and started that December, 1962, as a 17-year-old fill-in mail boy at Fishermans Bend. Sixteen roles later he had risen to senior sales and marketing executive of Holden, before leading Holden Special Vehicles for 22 years, working alongside Holden and the Holden Racing Team. The Crennan family’s combined service to The General totals 107 years. He lives in Melbourne.
Code: GM100
