Millions of vehicles have rolled off Geelong production lines over the decades, so it seems fitting that the city's latest arts festival featured an industrial car crusher.
As part of the White Night festival on Saturday night, a car was destroyed every half an hour to a funeral march and the sounds of a head-banging heavy metal band.
"It will be loud!" artist and musician Joseph O'Farrell told AAP ahead of the show.
"Almost like it's last moment for this car and we are celebrating its journey."
The performance piece, appropriately titled Heavy Metal, was part of the White Night events held in regional Victoria and was especially appropriate for a city once a centre of Australian car manufacturing.
But O'Farrell unfortunately could not say whether the eight cars fed into the crusher, supplied by Laverton based company Infrabuild, were Fords or Holdens.
The vehicle-destroying machine measured four metres high and about 10m wide and flattened each car into a cube of metal to be recycled, while the as-yet-unnamed heavy metal outfit played a song composed for the occasion titled Crusher.
More than 110 artists, most local, were involved in White Night, which also featured the colourful projections onto public buildings the event has become known for.
A giant lion-like creature with shimmering scales roamed the streets, while glowing giant eels also swam by the foreshore.
Since the final death throes of Geelong's Ford factory in 2016, the city has seen several major construction projects, O'Farrell believes his performance piece also speaks to the city as it is now.
"At the moment Geelong is a city in transition with lots of heavy machinery and building all around," according to O'Farrell, who was also the creative director of the White Night event.
But he said Geelong was coming to life as a centre for arts and music, with local artists making work of an international standard.
