The forgotten Australian-built cars: Lightburn Zeta

The Lightburn Zeta was one man’s grand and ambitious vision for a second car for every Australian home.

If Harold Lightburn had been successful in his automotive endeavors, Australian driveways would have been populated by Australia’s own car (Holden) and Australia’s second car, the Lightburn Zeta, a novel all fibreglass vehicle designed to fulfill a gap in Australia’s insatiable vehicle appetite.

Australia in the late 1950s and into the 1960s was experiencing something of an economic bonanza as the country swapped the sheep’s back for the beginning of the seemingly endless mining boom.

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As a result of this extended period of peace, unemployment was low, money was readily available, increases in protectionist tariffs aided the rise of new industries and Australia began to expand to support national growth.

The favourable economic conditions meant Australia needed space for these new industries and the people to work in them. The solution was simple: build out, with new roads, infrastructure and entire suburbs springing up almost weekly. With these new outer suburbs came increasing demands for cars and a greater prevalence of women attaining their driving license.

Enter South Australian industrialist Harold Lightburn. Already quite the successful entrepreneur, Harold had taken over the family business in 1941 and established the Lightburn Company just as World War II was in its final throes. Taking over the reigns from his father, he set about building a large facility on the former site of Camden Motordrome in South Australia and turning it into a manufacturing base for his newfound company, Lightburn & Co.

Just five years later, Lightburn had built an enviable manufacturing business, which employed 500 staff making brick molds, concrete mixers, power tools, wheelbarrows, go-karts, white goods, wheels and everything in between. As a result, the company had built a reputation for rugged, dependable, well made, yet unsophisticated products. Harold, ever the industrialist, was seeking more.

Seeing the growth in sales of his domestic products, driven largely by the surge in population and the development of outer suburbs, Harold conceived the idea of a new, affordable second car for the rising and more mobile middle class, launching Lightburn Cars in 1958.

Five years would pass before Australia would see the first Lightburn vehicle, the Zeta. Introduced in 1963, the Zeta was a small microcar (think Goggomobil) that was designed to suit every family’s needs; a camper van for weekends away, a daily runabout with room for the kids, a manoeuvrable utility vehicle and later a two-seat sports car. It featured a fibreglass body and a simple, utilitarian design – much like Lightburn’s other products.

First to launch was the Zeta Sedan, also known as the Zeta Runabout, which was followed quickly by the Zeta Utility. Featuring a ‘rust-proof’ fibreglass body, both Zeta variants were powered by a 324cc, two-stroke engine sourced from Villiers in the UK. Paired to a four-speed sequential-manual transmission, the front-drive Zeta claimed a top speed of ‘around’ 60 miles per hour going forwards AND backwards! Yes, the transmission worked both ways – a feature that was said to have terrified many.

Unfortunately, the Zeta’s character flaws did not stop there. Owing to its motorcycle-derived drivetrain, the Zeta had to be turned off and started in a reverse direction (that is, the engine restarted spinning backwards for reverse), the sedan had no rear hatch and the ‘fuel gauge’ was a piece of see-through piping hanging from the gravity fed fuel tank behind the dash. And that meant it could read anywhere between full and empty depending on the road gradient, or wind direction.

Performance-wise, the car struggled on any hill, or anywhere – with magazines at the time citing performance figures as ‘virtually nil’. In reality, tests of the time rarely reached 100km/h with a zero to 50mph sprint taking almost 75 seconds. Those same reports stated the car would at best return 42 miles to the gallon (6L/100km) despite its 400kg weight. Grip came from 125 section, 12-inch tyres with independent suspension front and trailing arm suspension rear, all mounted to a tubular steel chassis.

Inside the Zeta was a sparse affair with a steering wheel, seats and perspex side windows that slid open. On the plus side, the rear bench seat of the sedan could be removed for extra load carrying requirements – not that you could access the rear.

The Lightburn Sherpa, or ‘ute’, shared none of the rear cargo area access issues of its sedan sibling. What it did share however was ‘nil’ performance. When laden with anything more than a single bag of cement it was hard to see how the Sherpa could be used for anything more than greenkeeping duties. Maybe that is why the Sydney City Council purchased ‘several’ for its Hyde Park maintenance fleet. Ultimately, it was a hard sell and Lightburn only produced eight Sherpas, making it rarer today than some hypercars!

In an attempt to address some the criticism of the Zeta, Lightburn Cars made the bold decision to enter three Zetas in the 1964 Ampol Reliability Trial. Attracting 147 entrants from all over the world, the 1964 event was a 7000mile (11,265km) torture test of both man and machine.

Documented by Lightburn as a marketing exercise, the sight of three Zetas belting across the Australian outback is something to behold – if not just to imagine how the driver’s spines fared after two-weeks of torture.

Fourteen days after all vehicles departed Bondi Beach, 101 vehicles finished. That 101st vehicle was a Lightburn Zeta driven by South Australian Speedway driver, Ted Polgreen, and Zeta Development Engineer Ray Chapman. The other two Zetas also finished, but in an unofficial capacity having been disqualified for missed checkpoints throughout the event. It must be said that finishing the 1964 event was a feat in and of itself, and for that, Harold Lightburn could rightly hold his head high that all three of his cars survived the real-world torture test.

Later that year, Lightburn pulled the covers of the Zeta Sports, a 500cc, 400kg, two seat sports car – much like the Goggomobil Dart, but ‘not the Dart’. The Sports ‘boasted’ 15.5kW from its West German ZF Sachs two-cylinder drivetrain, which was again paired to a four-speed sequential-manual transmission. In keeping with the ‘unique’ features, the Sports had no opening doors or bumpers, but did feature a soft-top roof.

All told, just under 363 Lightburn Zetas were produced in just on three years, with approximately 30 Sports and eight Sherpas forming part of the total. In hindsight, Harold Lightburn was on the right track, but the execution was poor and the timing worse, because mid-way through the development of the Zeta, the Morris Mini Minor launched. Far more practical, the Mini performed well, looked great and cost just sixty pounds more than the compromised Zeta.

While Lightburn Cars did not achieve long-term success as an automobile manufacturer, the company left a lasting impact on the Australian automotive industry and the nation’s industrial base and continued operations until October 1986. Harold went on to live until the ripe age of 92. Today a Zeta Sedan holds pride of place in the National Museum of Australia’s collection in Canberra.

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