When Neville McCoullough first sat behind the wheel of his auto-transport haulier, the world was a vastly different place.
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In 1959, then fresh out of school, Mr McCoullough began what was to be a five-year apprenticeship as a mechanic with Wagga Motors.
Just a year later, however, he joined his older brother at what was then Hartwig's Holdens in Baylis Street.
The business had only just begun, and Mr McCoullough became one of the first employees, carting the merchandise from the factory floors to the sale yards.
"They had 23 trucks and we'd drive from Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane most days to pick up cars and transport them back to Wagga," Mr McCoullough said.
"We were one of the first car-carrying businesses in the state, not the first, but one of them."
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The Wagga man's life has revolved around cars, and in particular, he has had an affinity with every new model that rolled off the Holden assembly line.
Throughout the years, he has owned many, including the iconic early 1960s Holden FB.
"I've always had a Holden, you bet I did," Mr McCoullough said.
"In the '60s I bought one with a yellow stripe down the back.
"Now I have a Calais, I take good care of that."
Transporting the Australian classic cars around the country became something of a dream job for Mr McCoullough.
Throughout the next two decades, Mr McCoullough and the other drivers found themselves inundated with work as Holden became more and more sort after in Wagga.
So much so, that patrons were willing to wait an enormous amount of time between paying for the vehicle and actually taking delivery of it.
"If you bought a Holden in 1950, you'd have to wait two years to actually get it," Mr McCoullough said.
"The waiting lists for a car were just that long."
The situation became so dire, one thrifty dealership in town was rumoured to have found a lucrative way to get the wheels turning quicker.
As the story goes, the dealer was rumoured to be delivering the cars quicker, if costumers agreed to pay "a little bit more" for it.
"General Motors came in and shut that down though," Mr McCoullough recalls.
When Hartwig's transitioned from the main street to Edward Street in the mid-to-late 1970s, and again when the business moved to Dobney Avenue in 1984, the car sales side of the business fell away, and the company became synonymous with heavy truck sales.
Nowadays, the sight of a heavy-haulage car-carrier coming down Baylis Street is far, far less common, with most car yards existing outside the main CBD.
Not even the pinnacle Wagga-based business Hartwig's exists in its original venture, having last month announced it would be sold out of the hands of the namesake family after nearly 100 years.
Long since the days of driving from factory to sales floor as well, Mr McCoullough said he remembers when it was announced that cars would no longer be manufactured in Australia.
Holden, having this week announced its brand would cease to exist by 2021, stopped manufacturing in Australia in October 2017.
"It's sad to see we don't have even one car in Australia that's still made here," Mr McCoullough said.
"It's disappointing I suppose that these things have been lost, but the cost of keeping things like that is not feasible.
"Now the carriers would be driving to the wharves to pick up cars, they all come in by boat."