Christ, tonight is just gut-wrenching. They've already built the last ones.

[tml678]

It’s a travesty. I’m speechless, feel like I’ve lost something in my life.
The many Australian built new car lead ups including media rumours, sneak peeks, media releases etc that I’ve enjoyed through life are no more. How I loved “being involved” in the next new Aussie built car, whether it was a Mitsubishi, Toyota, Ford or Holden (or even a Nissan etc). The future feels empty.

Bang on cashie, I deadset feel like I've lost a member of the family. It's just f.ucked

 

[Forg]

i always thought holden would be around making cars, never dreamed they would close down manufacturing.
our pollies need to be strung up , they always put other countries interest first before ours.

I’m not so sure the pollies can be totally taken to task; we’re told it’s a Capitalist world, everything is about profit, and inefficient industries that can operate elsewhere should be replaced with smarter industries that can’t be done better elsewhere.
“Our” Holden was fully sold to an American company 80-ish years ago, and have been at the beck-and-call of that US head-office ever since.
It’s a sad thing to see it happen, but it’s kinda inevitable that US industry is going down the toilet as US society does the same; and the US companies here do the same.

We can only hope we learn from their mistakes, and don’t take the same downwards dives.

 

[tml678]

I’m not so sure the pollies can be totally taken to task; we’re told it’s a Capitalist world, everything is about profit, and inefficient industries that can operate elsewhere should be replaced with smarter industries that can’t be done better elsewhere.
“Our” Holden was fully sold to an American company 80-ish years ago, and have been at the beck-and-call of that US head-office ever since.
It’s a sad thing to see it happen, but it’s kinda inevitable that US industry is going down the toilet as US society does the same; and the US companies here do the same.

We can only hope we learn from their mistakes, and don’t take the same downwards dives.

With all due respect Forg, from memory you sing the praises of 4cyl hatchbacks and only drive V8's out of curiosity (if I recall one of your previous posts correctly)..perhaps tonight isn't the time to justify Holden's exit from the local manufacturing market while the rest of us are mourning it.

 

[426Cuda]

Unfortunately the cause was bigger than just the governments inaction.

Cause, yes. It was driven by many forces, some going back decades. However, the Coalition had the power to stop this. No question. It's on the record.They chose not to. They were wrong. It makes no sense, not by any measure. Short sighted governance, driven by dysfunctional party politics and a focus on nothing more than the next lunch bag poll and federal election. They screwed it up and if they spoke from the heart today, in an honest, informed, unbiased and objective sense, they would surely admit it.
I've voted liberal all my life. For the most part I believe my vote was for the best party and leader to govern our country. That said, I am a big fan of true leaders like Hawk and Keating. So, I am anything but strongly politically biased. I was not a voter during Hawkes reign and young and ill informed during the Keating years. I only hope Labour has good leadership and policy heading into the next election. Because the Coalition is lost, and I for one want to kick their pompous, disjointed, arses all the way to a couple of terms of political oblivion, for not stopping this.

 

[Forg]

426Cuda, while maybe it looked like the (admittedly evil in my eyes) Coalition forces could have stopped this, I don’t think that’s actually true 3-4 years later.
If you look at the sale of Opel, and the cost-cutting measures GM have made since then (and are still making), I don’t think that much a government could have done would’ve made any difference. You’re talking about million-dollar subsidies/incentives playing against billion-dollar problems with GM.

tml678 ... sorry, I don’t think that’s fair. I think the VE was a brilliant design, something which maybe didn’t have enough market locally but was highly saleable compared to production-costs worldwide. And the facelift, VF, was an extra 5% change that made the product seem like an extra 150% - just brilliant. You might have misconstrued something I’ve said; the VF was chosen by us on the basis of how good it actually was, not some one-eyed fanboism which must’ve driven the sale of a lot of less-convincing lower-quality Holden product in the past.
I’m bitter that the owners simply took to Holden with a machete, refused to allow the worldwide sales that the VE’s business-case was based on due to a childish “they did it better than us so we refuse to let their product be mass-manufactured”, and in the end shut down Holden due to heinous economic mismanagement at Head Office.

 

[houndogss]

I just saw the picture of the last Holden coming down the line, what an awful sight it was to have no other car behind it.

 

[W375 redline]

That Button plan to reduce tariffs to zero was the beginning of the end of car making in this country. Australia became the most fragmented car market in the world with something like 130 different brands of vehicles verses say a huge market like the US which only has about 30. People stopped buying local and bought all this cheap imported stuff that just flooded our market. I can say at least i did my bit and supported this once great company. Goodbye HOLDEN.

 

[Forg]

Sorry W375, that’s not quite true. People were still buying Commodores more than any other vehicle bar one or two.
The issue was choice, people just chose a bunch of different cars rather than just the locally made ones; it’s no different here to anywhere else, everywhere that an industry ain’t locally-owned is heading to the third-world to chase an extra 50c profit per-vehicle.

You make the local industry sound less economically-viable than it was. These decisions came down from Head Offices, more politics than financials, we were just shafted because we sold everything to overseas companies 80 years ago.

 

[W375 redline]

Sorry W375, that’s not quite true. People were still buying Commodores more than any other vehicle bar one or two.
The issue was choice, people just chose a bunch of different cars rather than just the locally made ones; it’s no different here to anywhere else, everywhere that an industry ain’t locally-owned is heading to the third-world to chase an extra 50c profit per-vehicle.

Yes that is true Forg that people were still buying local but with something like as i said before, with about 130 different brands to choose from, most of which were cheap imported stuff, people preferred these over the local product. As i said, at least i did my bit and bought local

 

[Pablito]

Sad sad day indeed.
The end of an era. Something i thought would always be there is gone.
I love my V8 commodores. Call me a bogan but I've owned every model of commodore since the VL apart from a VP. ( I wanted a VP Calais but kept the VN until i got the VR Calais)
I've always been like an excited kid waiting to see what the next models going to look like.
Those days are over. I'll just keep the VF untill it dies.
Mazda 323 driving hipsters make fun of us for owning and loving these 'thirsty dinosaurs' and give us **** about build quality and reliability etc. But i can honestly say in 20+ years of owning and driving these cars I've had very few problems.
I guess the masses enjoy driving cars with no personality that all look the same, so here we are.