Perhaps the best known, and most loved Holden of all, the EH... The Holden "Red" engine was an instant success... The Honda S500 Roadster, a strange brew of English sports car and Japanese motorbike... If you are wondering why the fellow in the background is loading the car via the front door instead of the tailgate, it is because the Zeta's fibreglass body did not have an operational rear door! Rear Drive, Alloy Engine...a first for mainstream British car manufacture

1963 was a watershed for Holden, releasing what many people today still consider to be their greatest achievement, the eighth model "EH Holden". The new model offered an impressive combination of style, power, refinement, ruggedness and value for money.

Launched in August, it was far more able to challenge the recently released XK Ford Falcon than the FB and EK. An immediate success, more than 250,000 were sold in the first 18 months of its release, making it the fastest selling Australian car - ever.

The biggest news with the new model was in the introduction of the new "Red Motor" that used an oversquare design with a seven bearing crankshaft. These were the first Holden motors to use hydraulic valve lifters, and they featured the use of an external oil pump and oil filter that made servicing a dream. So popular was the "Red" motor that it remained in service until 1985, during which time it had been continually improved and was now a 3.3 litre with fuel injection, 12 port head and counterbalanced crank.

A plaque in the Honda Collection Hall recalls the days when Soichiro Honda went from being a motorcycle manufacturer to a maverick carmaker, and the year was 1963. "I didn't want to build a car like everyone else's" Honda said; so his first car, the S500, was a two-seater roadster that borrowed its styling and its front-engine/rear-drive architecture, but not much else, from British roadsters.

And while other Japanese carmakers used cast-iron engines, Honda developed a water-cooled, double-overhead-cam, four-cylinder aluminium power plant, fed by four carburettors and capable of revving to an impressive 8000 rpm.

Would you like the convenience of a second car, but find the cost prohibitive. Harold Lightburn thought so in 1963, and put his talented whitegoods manufacturing company to work in the construction of the “Zeta”, based on the British “Anzani” mini car; but fitted with a new fibreglass 'Station Sedan' body shell. But don’t let the picture fool you, there was no rear tailgate and access to the rear storage area was available only via the front seats.

In a year of strange automobile creations, Hillman delivered the “Imp”, the first mass-produced British car to have the engine in the back, and the first to use a light aluminium alloy die-cast engine.

Certainly not a drivers car, but far more practical than the Zeta! In other motoring news, inertia reel seat belts would be offered on BMC cars in England; Jack Brabhain's first effort as a sports car constructor were immediately successful with class wins in the UK. Rover announced that it would proceed with its turbine project after the success of the Rover - BRM at Le Mans.

The first stage of the Ord River irrigatation scheme in Western Australia is opened. Cotton was the main crop in the region up until then, however with the loss of the cotton bounty and subsequent insect problems most if not all the farmers had abandoned the crop.