Holden FJ

Holden FJ

Holden

MarqueHolden
ProductionOctober 1953–June 1956
Engine132.5 cuin Grey I6

Among the 79 Holden entries in the MotorJury library, the Holden FJ holds its own page in a catalogue built to record every car ever made, from series production to one-off concepts. The record places its introduction in 1953. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

To read the Holden FJ properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1950s were the optimistic post-war boom, when chrome, tailfins and new unibody construction met the first purpose-built motorways and sports-car racing shaped reputations. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Chevrolet Chevrolet Corvette, the Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, the Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz S-Class — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Holden FJ reads like this: the record lists its engine as 132.5 cuin Grey I6; kerb weight is recorded at 2250 lb; drive goes through 3-speed manual; the layout is Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.

Its place in the Holden story

Within Holden's own catalogue the Holden FJ sits alongside the Holden 48-215, the Holden Adventra, the Holden Apollo, the Holden Astra. The record names the Holden 48-215 & 50-2106 as its predecessor and the Holden FE as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Alf Payze, Frank Mathwin. Assembly is recorded at Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth, Australia.

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

Why concepts and prototypes are in the library

Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.

From catalogue to ownership

A specification sheet is only half a car's story. The other half — what breaks, what it costs to keep, which years to avoid — lives in MotorJury's ownership database, computed nightly from federal complaint and recall records and EPA economy data. Where the Holden FJ was sold in the United States, its model years carry full ownership verdicts there.

Specifications

Transmission3-speed manual
LayoutFront-engine, rear-wheel-drive
Body style4-door sedan / 2-door coupe utility / 2-door panel van
Kerb weight2250 lb
Wheelbase2620 mm
Length4,401 mm
AssemblyAdelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth, Australia
DesignerAlf Payze, Frank Mathwin
PredecessorHolden 48-215 & 50-2106
SuccessorHolden FE
Catalogue IDQ2779218

Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.

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What it costs to run

Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.

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