Automotive Historians Australia Proceedings, vol 1 (original) (raw)

Automotive Historians Australia Proceedings, vol 2

Autopia: the car and the modern city. Proceedings of the 3rd annual conference of Automotive Historians Australia, 2018

Proceedings of 'Autopia. the car and the modern city', the 3rd annual conference of Automotive Historians Australia held in Melbourne, 2018.

Women in the early Australian Automotive Industry: A survey

RMIT Design Archives Journal, 2015

This survey of current research into the Australian automobile industry focuses on the ways in which women experienced the new technologies of speed and mobility in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is organised into three themes: women as drivers and mechanics, their opportunities as production workers, and as designers and engineers.

The Automotive History Review, Volume 64, Summer, 2023

The Automotive History Review, 2023

Articles on ASpects of Automotive Hsotory by Louis Fourie, Norm Darwin, John Field, Chris Lezotte, Mark Forbes, Stuart Blond, Vincent Stephens.

Research and innovation in the Australian automotive industry: a forgotten legacy

Annual Conference Automotive Historians Australia , 2017

This paper will discuss the legacy of the Australian automotive industry in terms of research and innovation, in particular, those aspects that relate to design. This is an under-researched area of our design history but one which offers numerous fruitful avenues of exploration. In his 2014 survey of Australian design historiography Dan Huppatz noted "modernism is a key theme in Australian design history and the nation-state as the obsessive framework for the repetition of anxieties about distinction from or conformity to international standards". (209). He suggests that Australian design history "requires a shift in focus away from the limited definition of design as a modernist professional practice (with little interest beyond the design world) and away from an autonomous nationalist framework (which ultimately generates little interest beyond Australia)". 1 Within this remit, he believes transnational and global histories might be useful. The automotive industry is, I would suggest, a promising field in which to develop new Australian design histories as from its origins in the late nineteenth century it has been a transnational and global phenomenon. And while it did foster individual achievement, particularly around patents, design innovation and advancement tended to be collaborative enterprises to which it is sometimes impossible to put one name. In academic design history where agency is so often attributed to a sole designer, anonymous corporate design has historically been overlooked. The fact that most histories of the automotive sector here have focused on Australian manufacture as a marker of national identity has deflected us away from larger issues. However, Norm Darwin's research on the history of automotive design in Australia offers an alternative avenue of enquiry because while it identifies local design innovation it also places it within a transnational context. This is particularly so with his in-depth study of the origins and achievements of the GM-H design studio. This paper is positioned within a broader context of design history and uses as a case study the Australian auto parts company Repco. The argument will operate on two registers. Firstly, it will use Cantwell and Fai's idea of the firm as a source of innovation and growth to examine the internal culture of innovation promoted by Repco in the postwar period. This is in contradistinction, for example, to Tony Fry's argument that innovation in firms is dependent on external stimuli, primarily market forces. 2 Secondly, it will look at examples of Repco's innovation that we can claim for Australia's design history.