Server Room

A timber-veneer cabinet stands open against an exposed brick wall. The electrical panel inside has been stripped, wiring hanging loose in the still air. The carpet is dark with ground-in grime. Spray cans and debris cover the floor. Graffiti works its way across the far wall in layers, the marks of whoever passed through after the work stopped. This room sat inside the Smith Street workshop and service centre that formed the operational core of Sundell Motors Pty Ltd, trading as Sundell Holden, authorised Holden dealer code 610 in Chatswood, NSW. While a separate showroom operation had run from the Pacific Highway until its demolition in 1987 for the Zenith Centre, the Smith Street building handled the mechanical work: servicing and repairs within the Holden aftersales network. Sundell Motors Chatswood Pty Ltd was registered with ASIC on 5 January 1967. By 2018, four Sundell entities had consolidated under a single company name. The broader Holden franchise withdrawal was announced by General Motors on 17 February 2020. The Holden brand ceased trading in Australia on 31 December 2020. Of the 185 Holden dealers operating at the time of the announcement, at least 120 had accepted compensation packages by 30 June 2020, with total compensation across the network close to $150 million. But by 2015, when this photograph was made, the Smith Street building was already disused. The walls had already been given over to graffiti. The electrical cabinet stood open, its contents disturbed, the carpet accumulating grime in the absence of any reason to clean it. Willoughby City Council approved a development application in March 2021 for a five-storey Woolworths supermarket on the site, which opened on 26 October 2022. The workshop was demolished around 2021. What the photograph records is the interval: a building discarded before the franchise that built it formally ended, standing empty on IN2 Light Industrial land in a precinct already moving toward something else.