After cranking out some of the coolest cars to ever be made in Australia, Holden’s last plant in Elizabeth will live on as a mushroom factory. It’s a very different sort of business from fire-breathing V8 sedans like the VX Commodore SS, but I reckon it’s a fitting fate for Australia’s last car factory.
As ABC News Australia reports, the factory that churned out hot Commodores has been acquired by Epicurean Food Group, which is in the process of turning the facility into a massive mushroom plant. More than 20,000 tonnes of the edible fungi are expected to roll out of the plant every year, ready to go on burgers, pizzas, or whatever you care to use them for.
What’s more, the variety is expected to be incredible. As Epicurean Food Group CEO Kenneth King told ABC, “We start with white oyster mushrooms, then we will go into shiitake, enoki, and king oyster.” Equally impressive is the fact that processing will be done on-site, with all the good stuff packaged up and cast-off mushrooms molded into vegan burger patties and other processed foods.
You might be wondering what the hell mushrooms are doing on a car blog. Well, aside from mushrooms being rather tasty, it’s nice to see such an iconic place of motoring history repurposed rather than being torn down. If you took a trip to Cadillac’s Clark St. Plant in Detroit or Ford’s Southampton plant, you’d find they no longer exist. While it would be selfish to wish that every car plant ever still existed, it’s nice when the structures avoid demolition.
It’s also cool to see an automotive manufacturing facility being turned into something green. Mushrooms need very little water to grow, and are a decent source of protein and B vitamins. They’re a sustainable crop, important in a world of dwindling freshwater supplies.
Then there’s fungi as a metaphor. See, Oyster and shiitake mushrooms, varieties expected to be grown in the old Holden plant, are white-rot fungi, meaning they feed off of decay. Think more scavenger and less predator. The Elizabeth factory may have closed up shop in 2017, but the decay of the Australian car building industry set in far before that. Between tapering tariffs leading to cheaper imported cars and mining booms leading to a currency too strong for profitable exports, the tiny Australian car industry died a slow, prolonged death. It cranked out some absolute legends, but it wasn’t sustainable in a world of global trade.
From decay, the mushrooms shall thrive. I’m sure there’s a Holden deez mushrooms joke to be drawn from this story, but growing food from the ruins of Holden sounds pretty cool. After all, food and cars are both huge parts of culture. Just like how Commodores made Bathurst better, a good mushroom helping can really put a shine on dinner.
(Photo credits: Holden, jonolist licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, public domain)
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Is no one else concerned about the a presumably toxic auto plant being turned into a food factory?
I’m just glad I got mine when I did! Just like the one pictured, but with silver wheels. And yes, three pedals.
From Holden to mouldin’, the decline and fall of domestic cars in Australia. (Using British spelling of mold because that’s favored in Oz.) when will we see the first Mushutes?
This article really underplays the amount of fetid shit that will be pumped into that plant rather than churned out of it.
10/10
I must be a mushroom, they keep me in the dark and feed me horse poop.
Last week I was very confused to see a Holden badge, only to learn that it’s a thing with SS owners. So that was quite cool.
This morning I saw a murdered-out black SS while I was waiting to cross the street. I gave a thumb’s up but the driver missed it because he was dropping a gear, flooring the pedal, and changing two lanes around normal traffic across a small city block while making childish noises with an aftermarket exhaust. So that was not cool at all. And that’s my Australia story for the day.
The Holden badge was available from the factory/dealer
You seen to have located a bogan.
Great repurpose of the plant. Here in PA some company Moonlight Mushrooms uses an old coal mine to grow mushrooms. And down in Clemson SC they use an old unfinished confederate train tunnel for some really awesome Blue Cheese.
shr000000000000000ms
Vegan burger patties. Great. Just remember to put a metric ton of salt on them so they have some flavor.
Must not…make… shit quality…..jokes….
That is really sad. I kind of wanted to go to Australia because of two things. Oddball Aussie only cars and the great barrier reef.
Good news, even though cars are no longer manufactured in Australia, many thousands of the fine cars which were manufactured here continue to exist.
A very strong base of enthusiasts will ensure they are around for many decades to come.
Even if, as is reported, there is no reasonable reason in the world why some of those cars should, in fact, still be around for many decades to come.