Harley Tarrant
inventor, colonel
This article first appeared as part of the White Hat Innovations & Innovations Newsletter - 21st October 2008
As you walk along Bourke Street Melbourne you may notice the recently built RACV (Royal Automobile Club of Victoria) building. Most tour guides ignore this building and the nearby previous BHP Building which used important new engineering approaches to create high rise steel-framed buildings with lots of open space. Many tour guides in Australia can give you details of minor artists whose reputation never spread far but could not name any of Australia's great inventors or Nobel Prize winners let alone explain the significance of their work. Don�t follow the tour guide. Make your way into the RACV foyer. Each month there is a heritage car on display many of which have fascinating links to Australia�s history and heritage. If you are there as the guest of a member and can proceed past the foyer, make sure you go down a floor and look at the Tarrant Car. Tarrant cars were the first production cars built in Victoria and were the first petrol driven cars produced for sale in Australia. The two seater roadster on display at the RACV is probably the most important Australian motor car that has been preserved and painstakingly restored.
The creation of the Tarrant Car in (then remote) Australia was quite a remarkable achievement by Harley Tarrant (later Colonel Tarrant) but he was to have his eyes opened when his motor works received its first delivery of a T Model Ford. It was sort of an Ikea car. It arrived flat packed with instructions and an Allen key. This meant that any distributor around the world could assemble it (OK it required more than an Allen key) and on-sell it at a reasonable price without the need of an elaborate factory. The Deakin T2 Car has been designed with the same principles in mind.
Harley was impressed. He realised the Model T was beautifully designed for its purpose. For instance, the bodywork was designed so that it also formed part of the outside packaging for the �flat pack�.
Harley quickly became a distributor of the Model T and like many inventors around the world took on board the lesson that in order to get your invention on the market it needs more than just a good idea � it needed good industrial design.
While sitting in the State Library I found this entry on Harley written in the wonderfully restrained manner of a professional historian capable of saying more between the lines than directly on paper.
�In 1908 Tarrant had become first commanding officer of the Victorian branch of the part-time Australian Volunteer Automobile Corps and from September 1914, with the rank of colonel, was in charge of Commonwealth military motor transport. The magnitude and urgency of wartime needs made mistakes inevitable. A 1918 royal commission report charged his administration with inefficiency and waste, alleging that the public had been misled by the extent to which Tarrant Motors was favoured with repair contracts. Harley accepted responsibility by resigning, but in 1920 was appointed M.B.E.�
�Come along!� urges the guide. �That ugly new building has nothing to do with the wonderful history of Melbourne. Just down here is one with some wonderful decorations on the outside.�
On the RACV website you can find more information about Colonel Harley Tarrant and the Tarrant Car (sorry - colonel harley tarrant and the tarrant car - the RACV marketing manager apparently did Marketing 101 in the late 90s when it was taught that you can make things more relevant and understandable by dropping all capital letters in headings) at The Last Surviving Tarrant Car.
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