When ABC News NSW (never mind the commercial networks, such as Nine News Sydney which tonight had about six minutes of coverage at the top) is running the end of Holden as their top story, you know we’re REALLY talking about the death of an Australian icon…
The death of Holden was also top story on ABC News Victoria.
I agree with Moe that GM should have sold Holden and all its intellectual property to another carmaker or just another company so the brand can continue.
I guess at my workplace we will not be manufacturing Holden accessories,acrylic Headlight protecters,bonnet protectors and weather shields for much longer.When I first started working there we mainly made Holden and Ford accessories .How many Holden accessories I have bagged and cleaned,placed into plastic bags over the last 26 years I have no idea,would be lots. I like that iconic Holden logo also ,the lion holding a wheel
I still see a lot of old Commodores around with our acrylic headlight covers on them .The ones you can buy from Supercheap Auto are a cheap copy ,ours have the proper logo on them ,Holden ,Ford,etc
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According to Australian Financial Review columnist James Thomson, the death of Holden began in 2002 when it released the third generation Monaro. (The column is behind the paywall, a summary can be found in the article below) This really surprises me, as I always thought the end of Holden started in 2008 when Global Financial Crisis hit.
It’s his opinion. You can have a differing opinion.
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Holden stubbornly wouldn’t move with the market - the seeds of that probably date back to the monaros rebirth. The events since have just added more fuel to the fire. Trying to continue the commodore name with the zb was dumb, but they also had a range of cars that no one really wanted
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The Isuzu-GM split is probably quite important - Isuzu entering the market saw them take a huge chunk of what were previously ‘Holden’ sales, even if it was the same vehicle. Once they then lost the Ute as well, then they are a fraction of their sales in that space.
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Monaro’s rebirth was also when sales of the Commodore was at its peak. Holden was so concentrated in the development and production of Commodore and Monaro 3rd gen that it forgot other segments like utes and SUV (the Adventra was an afterthought).
They took their paw off the ball, you might say.
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I thought that the Holden Colorado was selling well even though it isn’t manufactured here,I see so many of them around and we made lots of accessories for them.
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I think you’d still have the problem of where can you source quality cars from that aren’t already sold here… Importing GMC cars from the US and converting them locally to RHD won’t be cost effective in any meaningful volumes to sustain the current Holden dealer network.
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They could continue to import rebadged Opel/PSA models (Astra and re-introduce the Barina/Corsa) and rebadge some of their SUVs. Daihatsu might have some models that could be rebadged for here also?
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Today we were printing Holden Commodore Weather shields for 97 Commodore.We still make them ,just not as many for older model cars
Our accessories can only be purchased from car dealerships,a pair of headlight protectors for example costs about $70 . I was able to buy direct from work a pair for my ASX ,only paid $22👍
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Absolutely not. Daihatsu make teeny tiny supermini cars in Japan and I can’t think of a single model which would sell well here. I LOVE Daihatsu cars, but even I can see that badging them as Holdens would make zero sense.
If Holden had kept on going with rebadging Suzukis (as they did in the 1990s with the Swift and the first-gen Holden Cruze), rather than importing the lemon Opels and Daewoos, I think they would have been much better off. But obviously GM head office forced them to import those shitboxes because they were part of the GM family and would be better for the bottom line.
Once Australian manufacturing died, the poisonous import models with notoriously poor resale values and unreliability made the brand totally worthless.
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Does anyone remember the Holden Apollo that was a rebadged Toyota Camry from about the late 80s?There was also the Holden Nova,a rebadged Toyota Corolla from the same time
I owned a 1992 Holden Barina in the mid 90s that was really a Suzuki Swift with a Holden Badge
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Yes, and how Toyota sold a rebadged Commodore as the Toyota Lexcen.
It was very weird seeing a pushrod V6 in a Toyota at a time when they were heavily promoting their Twin Cam technology.
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The main ingredient would be sugar, so I would pass on that. It needs to be dark chocolate with sugar down towards the bottom of the ingredients list, then I might buy it.
Forgot about that one
We were making more old Holden accessories at work today.Bonnet protectors for '97 VT Commodore and headlight protectors for the 2014 VF Commodore.this model must have been the last locally manufactured Commodore
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