Lots of interesting comments here and most spot-on in a factual way. Four things killed Holden; the Button plan, Tony Abbott and his mate Joe Hockey, US unions and the main culprit...the CEO of GM, Mary Barra. GM changed a lot after the GFC and its upper management was no longer full of "car guys" like Lutz who understood car engineering. They looked at the profits they made in China and slowly decided to kill off their unprofitable divisions...hence South African GM died, Opel was sold to PSA and Holden was given the death of a thousand cuts.
I want all of us to understand something quite fundamental about Holden... By the time the VE was being planned Holden's Aussie engineers were probably the best rear-wheel drive platform designers in the world, bar none. The VE/F were truly world-class cars and were far better than anything GM US were producing short of the Cadillac CTS, etc. Holden's build quality piddled all over their North American counterparts. In fact Holden's quality was almost on par with their Chinese GM/SAIC division (and that was pretty good). The US government...prodded by American union lobbyists, made sure that GM could only import Holdens in small numbers via their Gas guzzler tax and other disincentives. If GM had offered the complete Holden range in the US the punters would have bought them by the truckload. Americans were not pleased they missed out on the ute and sportwagon at all (there's a US company which actually buys VE/F utes and converts them to LHD to satisfy that market). Problem was such sales would have dented Chevy Malibu sales making the US unions very unhappy.
Add all of the above to the extreme economic rationalist policy of Tony Abbott and you have Holden dying slowly. The Button plan started the death of Australian automotive manufacturing...Abbott was the final nail in the coffin. The Button plan had some good aspects but the forced model sharing was a huge failure and actually cost the companies a load of money. In the main part the whole fiasco was designed to make cars cheaper for average Aussies with scant attention being paid to the long term effects on the viability of the local manufacturers.
Now, thanks to the Covid crisis, things are getting interesting. The government has realised what a huge mistake it was to give up literally the entire manufacturing capacity of the nation. Losing the car industry meant we are now beholding to foreign supply chains which can be interdicted by the Chinese navy on a whim. Also the loss of the car industry means that should there be a war we have stuff-all heavy industrial plants to convert to war production. Bad all round! We have lost our pharmaceutical manufacturing (generics are mostly made in India or China...read the label on your box of generic Ibuprofen) and even our ability to make important medical equipment. This MUST change and it is up to us, the general public...the voters...to make sure this situation is made right. Obviously we cannot go back to the halcyon days of the 60s when we made everything ourselves due to high tariff walls but we need to insist that industries important to our strategic survival return here.
We CAN make cars in this country. Sir Lawrence Hartnett proved that to the bigwigs at GM back in the early 40s and I wish he was still alive today to advise the Australian government or someone like him who has faith in our abilities as a people. If you are interested in how Larry Hartnett turned Holden around in the 30s and 40s watch these short documentaries on Youtube:
