ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
young man who laid eyes on the last Holden Commodore and fell in love has revealed to The Advocate that he’s also a fucking freak in other parts of his life.
“It’s a good car,” said Duncan Handmer, a self-described small e-businessman, who prides himself on being pragmatic to the point where perfect strangers are left with little doubt that he has some sort of mild neurological disorder.
“Cheap, too. I don’t know why people don’t like them. They have a lot of grunt, and it’s a Holden, mate. What’s not to like?”
The ZB was the Commodore’s cadaveric spasm. A last-ditch twitch that more than saw off the end of the nation’s preferred automobile. Its biggest competitor, the Ford Falcon, was humanely euthanized in 2016.
Holden decided to forge ahead, largely due to an enormous Commonwealth bailout that General Motors pretty much sent straight back to Detroit, leaving Holden to die. Nevertheless, the legacy of Holden’s most vulgar creation since the Trax lives on in people like Mr. Handmer.
“I actually owned a Trax before this car; I love Holdens,” he went on to say.
“It was a 2013. I’d just finished culinary college, and I was ready to start my adventure. Because of a few problems I had with the staff at the college, I didn’t actually finish, per se, but I had the skills but no piece of paper. Anyway, I’d saved up to buy my first car, and as soon as I saw that 2013 Holden Trax, I was in love. Not just with the Trax, but with Holden.”
“I’d only had that car for about a year when the mechanic said I’d been driving it around with the oil light on for too long. As my Dad said, ‘It’s not a genie lamp, you floppy-haired cunt, it’s the oil light,’ but we got it fixed. It cost a fortune, and then, like, I came home once, and it was whining like a 17-year-old forklift in Beijing, as Dad said.”
“So Dad had one of his mates down at the Greek Club come over at night and steal it. I never forgave him for torching my Trax. He just laughed when I asked him what happened. He said Johnny Ataktos’ 15-year-old son took it for a joyride, drove it up curbs, through parks, down drains, and did a few reverse donuts in the ALDI car park. Then he took it to the flat, and in Dad’s words, ‘He fucking torched the cunt!’ and he just laughed again.”
“But luckily, the ZB is only third-party, so he won’t dare burn it.”
