Eagers

Shock horror! What is going on here? A bloke goes to photograph a place for a blog post and it's gone! Well, all but gone. After decades of operating at its Newstead site, the Eagers car yard is being moved to Newmarket. This photo (below) is the sight of the site when I visited recently. The showrooms were empty and the forecourt, normally crowded with cars, was totally bare except for a lone vehicle belonging to a workman, tellingly parked right next to a skip that was being filled with rubbish. Brisbane's past was being converted to its present right before my eyes. (Photo: © 2009 the foto fanatic) 

The Eagers name goes right back to 1913, when Edward Eager and his son Frederick formed an automotive firm that was to become a well-known Brisbane Holden dealer. The following photo shows the official Queensland launch of the FX Holden at Eagers' showroom in 1948.

(Photo: State Library of Queensland and John Oxley Library; #111267)

In fact it was selling General Motors vehicles before the Holden was built in Australia, and the picture below shows the Newstead showrooms in 1937 with a lineup of Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles and Buicks.

(Photo: State Library of Queensland and John Oxley Library; #7156)

As well as selling cars, Eagers also developed a large workshop and parts business. It also assembled vehicles from parts imported from overseas. The following picture shows the workshop area at Newstead around the year 1924. During WWII, a part of the site was used as a parts distribution warehouse for Allied forces.

(Photo: State Library of Queensland and John Oxley Library; #7136)

And here is a recent photo of the Parts division of the business.
(Photo: © 2009 the foto fanatic)

In 1957, Eagers was listed as a public company, and in 1992 it merged with the AP Group, another large automotive business to become AP Eagers Group Limited, a congolmerate of car dealerships, other automotive businesses and insurance. The company sells Holden, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Land Rover, Volvo, VW, Jaguar, KIA, Mazda, Porsche, Subaru, Peugeot, Mitsubishi and Lexus vehicles from various dealerships in Queensland and interstate. And what of the Newstead site? I was able to discover that Eagers sold it in December 2006, but I can offer no news on its future.

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tff

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