A Frames

The A-frames are the roof trusses, a repeating line of them running the full length of the workshop at Chatswood East with a strip of skylights between each pair. Daylight comes down through them onto walls where almost no surface has been left untouched, 'ICE!' in maroon above the exit sign at left and the tag 'Aliena' beside the red-painted staircase on the right. An overturned traffic cone and scattered debris sit on the concrete floor below. The frames are orderly in the way that functional things tend to be: built to a purpose, arranged without decoration, left as they were when the work stopped. The building was the service and mechanical arm of Sundell Motors Pty Ltd, a multi-branch Holden dealership registered on 5 January 1967 and assigned Holden dealer code 610 for Chatswood, NSW. The company operated under various entity names across the North Shore, with confirmed operations at Chatswood and Pittwater, placing it among the larger Holden dealer groups in Sydney's northern suburbs. The site handled servicing and repairs; the showroom and sales function operated separately on the Pacific Highway until that site was cleared in 1987 for the Zenith Centre office complex. Sundell's story after 2015 tracks the wider collapse of the Holden franchise network. On 17 February 2020, General Motors announced the withdrawal of the Holden brand from Australia and New Zealand. At the time of withdrawal, 185 dealers across the country held Holden franchises. The ACCC intervened in May 2020 after complaints that dealers were being pressured to accept compensation packages under an unreasonably short deadline; total compensation across the network came to close to $150 million. The Holden brand ceased trading in Australia on 31 December 2020. Four Sundell entities had already consolidated into a single company, Sundell Motors Pty Ltd, in September 2018. The site was demolished around 2021. Woolworths Chatswood East opened on the former workshop footprint on 26 October 2022. The photograph records the workshop as it stood in 2015, the roof frames intact and the graffiti already several layers deep. The building was already empty. The Holden brand had five more years to run.