Earliest Sandman?

[78 sin bin]

Hi all,

My good mates father has always talked about his 1st sandman.. we caught up over a few beers during the great race and told me he had a few things to show me. He pulled out a wad of pristine papers. his rego papers and other receipts from the initial purchase as well as some not so happy snaps of a dented white hq sandman after he rolled it. the story goes something like this (bit hazy on exact details after a coupla froths) he went to adelaide to buy a new car and saw a picture of a sandman so went to the holden dealership to purchase one. they had never heard of it and rang around. somehow got onto the plant and they said they had the 1st one roll off the line on its way to another dealer or factory (cant recall) he asked what colour and they said white and he said he would take it if they could put windows in it by the end of the arvo because he head to drive back to kimba (country sa) so by the end of the arvo he was a brand new sandman owner with windows but no stripes because they hadnt been printed yet and he got them sent to his home address and i think put them on himself at home.

so could there be any truth to this story and is there anyway of finding out if it was the 1st one off line? i took a snap of a coupla papers which had the date of manufacture and the engine number on it to share when i upload them later. he would love to track it down but i would find it highly unlikely that would be possible.

anyhow any info would be great to a pass on.. cheers

[Kingsandman]

Holden historical services might be able to help.

[Sandaro]

love these stories, doesn't really matter if it turns out to be true or not (maybe salesman spin in the day?) but if you still have numbers and photos throw them up

[Alien DNA]

Keen to see where this story goes

[Big Rob]

Yeah... Someone had to get the first one! (and the last one). It's just that nobody cared about that sort of stuff back then, they were the days of plenty.... where you traded in your "old" GTR XU-1 on that new SL/R 5000 or your XW GT on the new XY GT.

There was never going to be an end to all the cool cars so they were treated accordingly. People didn't put any emphasis on having the 1st or last or "The only one in this colour" like they do today.

[Sandaro]

Of course it would be a very hard claim to prove, unless there was a letter from Holden at the time (which I doubt they produced). And Holden gave them no unique sequence number to the sandman, so coming in towards the end of HQ production the first sandman would have just been the 342579th HQ made at that plant (I just made that number up). Add to that that sandman production was across several plants.

I believe that what your mate's numbers may be able to ascertain is the earliest known example to exist. They are people on here that collect numbers and would be able to say whether they have an earlier one recorded.

[wbute]

Unreal. The first Sandman produced was 342579!

[davegmh]

I might have the last one. It was made in July. (This year)

[Blocker]

I saw the last 5.
When I say they were the last 5 I mean they were the last ones to get detailed at GMH Elizabeth before delivery, whether they were the last ones off the production line is a completely different matter.

All 5 were black, one was a ute the other 4 were wagons.

[davegmh]

My ute ??