Hopalong's Holden Special

[griffin]

I ran across this item in the GHM "Pointers" magazine from December 1954. As a kid I watched Hoppy (re-run after re-run for years) when TV finally graced our home in the late 50s or early 60s.

The Holden conversion is amazing and I find it even more amazing that such an unusual car didn't survive, snaffled by some Hopalong fan after the tour at least.
In 1954 with the availability of various GM convertibles here it seems odd to make such a special, but I guess the publicity was priceless for Holden.
Here's the whole article, who knows, it might still be sitting in a shed in South Australia somewhere.

Happy searching

George

[Richard]

Hi George.
Not a bad looking FJ.
Do you remember when the Queen visited Australia?
I think it was also 1954 from memory, and Holden converted a couple of FJ Holdens for the Royal Tour with the back roof cut out, so this one may well be one used by the Queen as it would be very unlikely that State Motors converted it just for Hopalong. Even in the article it mentioned that Hopalong was able to "ride like royalty."
As a bit of a side note, I remember reading somewhere that once they cut the rear roof section out the cars handled very badly so they then had to reinforce the chassis to make them drivable.