Early Australian Automotive Design by Norm Darwin

[Mike Cecil]

A few weeks back, a rather handsome large format hard-back arrived in the mail, compliments of the author, Norm Darwin, who I had provided some assistance to while he was conducting research for his doctoral thesis. Norm is well known in Australian automotive history circles due to his many articles in 'Restored Cars' magazine, and his two early books, the histories of GMH and Ford in Australia. These days, Norm and his wife run their own publishing company: Hand Publishing.

This book, 300 x 250mm and 340 pages, is as you would expect, mainly about civilian car and truck design and construction, with only a few pages about wartime and per-war production of military vehicles and other munitions projects that the major automotive companies were involved in. I get the impression that the military aspects are not Norm's strength, and there are a few misinterpretations in the text. There is also an image taken from page 141 of the 'GMH War Record' which purports to show Australian Cruiser tanks on the production line, but actually shows a line of M4 series Shermans - something Norm unfortunately missed when he reproduced the image to illustrate the short Aust Cruiser tank section of the book.

Overall, I enjoyed browsing through the well-illustrated book, learning much about the evolution of Australian automotive design. For those of you interested in more than military vehicles, this book would be well worth obtaining. But it is 'Australia-centric' which may not be of great interest to those outside Australia, and the postage rates to overseas may also be a deterrent. But for all you 'Aussie locals', a book well worth reading.

Mike