Body Shop

The building at 17 Smith Street, Chatswood East served as the workshop and service centre for Sundell Motors Pty Ltd, an authorised Holden dealer registered in New South Wales on 5 January 1967. Assigned Holden dealer code 610, the Chatswood operation was the mechanical and aftersales arm of a multi-branch dealer network that extended across Sydney's northern suburbs, with confirmed entities at Chatswood and Pittwater. The Smith Street site was distinct from the earlier Pacific Highway showroom, which was cleared in 1987 for the Zenith Centre office complex. When General Motors announced the withdrawal of the Holden brand from Australia on 17 February 2020, Sundell Motors was one of 185 Holden dealers affected. The ACCC intervened on 22 May 2020 after dealers raised concerns about compensation timelines, and a Senate inquiry later documented the imbalance of bargaining power between Holden and its network. The Holden brand ceased trading in Australia on 31 December 2020, and total compensation across the dealer network reached close to $150 million. By 2015, when this photograph was made, the Smith Street workshop was already vacant. The graffiti visible across every wall surface, across the structural steelwork, and up toward the gabled steel roof records the building's interstitial period, the years between closure and demolition. Pendant lights hang loose from the ceiling. Debris covers the concrete floor. Nothing of the original workshop function remains visible in the frame. Willoughby City Council approved DA-2017/182 for a five-storey Woolworths development on the site in March 2021. The Smith Street building was demolished around that year. Woolworths Chatswood East opened on 26 October 2022, replacing a light industrial workshop with a full-line supermarket. The land had been zoned IN2 Light Industrial under the Willoughby LEP 2012, consistent with a broader transition in the East Chatswood precinct from industrial to commercial and retail uses.