I’d say their continual release of ■■■■ cars since the 90s helped a lot to their going under. with the affordability of actually good cars from europe and japan pretty much finishing them.
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They have been pretty crap athough the last Holden I owned, a Commodore VS ute wasn’t bad. I got 600,000+ kms out of that thing and apart from a plastic hose connector sh*tting itself, it never broke down.
Not that I know anything about cars but a lot are going that way, even traditionally good European brands now produce crap, à la FIAT, Renault and Citroen. My mother had the latter, thing was a heap of crap in which everything used to break.
I can’t ever remember these being the peak of european cars, only notorious for electrical issues.
I was more talking your ,toyotas/mazdas/hondas/vw/merc/bmw.
you see soo many c200s and 318is on the road, as well as mazda 3s, corolla/camrys, civics. whereas when i was growing up falcons and commodores and anything else was exotic.
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Weren’t they supposed to be here for 10 years? We gave them $200m to be here for 10 years didn’t we?
You ask too many questions.
That is just not true, Aceman. Workers at Ford, Holden and Toyota were not on massive pay, and Unions had co-operated with Management for years and there were no excessive demands. And in Toyotas case, it was a massive export industry at very competitive prices.
The real truth is that all the Motor Companies around the World are subsidised; especially in Germany and others parts of Europe. China has a policy that only cars made in China can be sold in China; and on the streets of Beijing is just about every type of car made, all now with factories in China.
We should have a car industry and for $500 million we would have; much better value than subsidising coal and other mining.
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I like my Jackaroo (OK, it’s an Isuzu)
I believe that was Mitsubishi.
Their failure to honour that was a contributing factor to the French winning the future subs work.
India has a similar policy. It means that 90% of the cars there are garbage. It’s a nice idea to only buy what you can manufacture but it seems to make everything expensive and garbage.
Don’t all commodores have unit stickers on them?
Heh. My 2nd car was one exactly like this - a candy apple red HT Monaro.
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Remember when a bumper bar could be used for actually bumping things out of the way?
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1947 or something. They’ve only ever really made cars as a GM subsidiary.
Speaking of “just not true”, China are like the 2nd or 3rd biggest car importer in the world. It’s true they always support local at a political level, and they probably tariff the hell out of them, but their burgeoning middle class want BMW and Mercedes.
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Which is the tariffs coming into play. Used to be a 30k (retail sticker) GMH or Ford was a 30k car, while a 30k BMW or Nissan was a (say) 25k car with 5k of extra tariffs.
I’m not sure it was such a bad thing either. Not so much for the however many thousand jobs with Ford/Mitsubishi/GMH themselves, but the flow on effect on other manufacturing, smelting, design/Engineering etc etc.
they had no impetus to improve though, the fords and holdens of the 90s were and are garbage. a lot of the 00s too.
if they adopted medium sized sedans with 4 bangers that might have gone a long way to surviving.
Most definitely. In Beijing especially my wife commented that she had never seen so many Mercs or BMW’s.
Half the people in my street have worked at Holden’s at some point in time and they are a key employer of the Northern suburbs in which I live so I can only go by what they say. Their last EBA was in 2012 and shortly after their wages were frozen at $29/hr for the base rate. Depending on which part of the factory and what grading that can rise to $40/hr.
Not bad for unskilled workers especially when a large percentage over the years have been made up of early school leavers. The industry just isn’t sustainable at that amount, I’d give them $21/hr tops
Cortina. Possibly the worst car in the history of the universe. Mrs Shelton had one when she was still a maiden. She managed eventually to get someone to give her the value of what was remaining on the rego and tow it away.