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Ford to shut down production in Australia?

meady_183

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I am genuinely upset at the fact that local manufacture is going down the drain. Australians make the best cars for Australian conditions, that is fact. These cars are designed, engineered and built here, by Australian people. (No one jump in with a smart comment about opel being the father of the commodore up until ve, because even though the platform was developed by opel, a lot of separate engineering work goes in to modify the base platform to suit us). FordAU's parent company in the us made the worst decision I believe it could have done when instead of making the focus locally, it developed the ecoboost. What a reckless decision that was. It didn't work for holden in 1982 during the oil crisis, and it doesn't work now. Australian vehicle manufacture employs 100's of thousands of people. Those who work in parts, assembly, service, sales, PR, design and engineering. The holden developed Zeta platform is whats under the Chevrolet Camaro, one of the best handling cars the us has ever made. and why? because it was Australians who developed it. Why is the new ford ranger the best in class? Because all its engineering work was done by ford Australia. We have talent in this country and its about time the world noticed.

All this talk of ending the commodore line after falcon shouldn't scare us too much however as it has all happened before. Sales of the kingswood started to dip, so holden started manufacturing a smaller car, and ended the H-body line. Commodore sales are starting to dip now, so holden builds the cruze in order to offset those losses in sales.

Australians need to start buying Australian cars. Never before has there been better value Australian cars, that are leaders of their respective classes. Never before has there been a better time to buy Australian made.

Support the Australian Economy, buy us a future, AND BUY AUSTRALIAN!

\end rant, cheers guys
 

'ssv'

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No smart ass comments from the usual ford owning just commodores members?

Seriously though, its been comming for a while now. Like already posted, the sales have been dropping for years for the big family car.
With fuel prices the way they are, affordable cars are small cars.
Families these days prefer the compact suv for safety, fuel economy and space.
Australias performance scene (imo) is on the decline. As well as the typical 'aussie bloke'.
They're all turning into frappé drinking, 4 cylinder driving hippsters...
Gone are the days of dad buying his car (commodore/falcon) and loving it like a new born.
I think the aussie obsession/pride of 'our' locally built cars has gone.
 

commodore665

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I can't imagine there will be much care taken , regards quality control now that Ford employees will be out of work , probably not a good time to buy a Ford
 
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Calaber

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It's disappointing to see the apparent indifference to what it means to lose two major domestic designers and builders of cars on this thread. Australia is one of few (13?) countries that design and build their own cars and we are about to just chuck it all away with the comment "ah, well, it was bound to happen", or "so what?" This country used to develop its own technology in many different fields but for a multitude of reasons, we don't any longer. Usually, it's because it's much cheaper to buy imported goods. The unions don't help their or the nation's cause with wage and working condition demands that are unaffordable or unsustainable, yet they don't back off.

Examples of what was once Aussie designed and made include radios and televisions. The radios fitted to Holdens and Falcons used to be made for Australian conditions, had powerful reception and were well suited to our long distances between major centres and transmission towers. As the local stuff died out, we were fed cheap Asian rubbish that barely picked anything up outside the built-up areas. Even some pricey Euro's suffered the same probs. Now, it appears, locally designed and built cars will follow.

Do we really want to just become the world's quarry - selling our nation at "x" dollars per tonne and buying every manufactured item from overseas? I'm damned sure I don't.
 

tanner892

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No smart ass comments from the usual ford owning just commodores members?

Seriously though, its been comming for a while now. Like already posted, the sales have been dropping for years for the big family car.
With fuel prices the way they are, affordable cars are small cars.
Families these days prefer the compact suv for safety, fuel economy and space.
Australias performance scene (imo) is on the decline. As well as the typical 'aussie bloke'.
They're all turning into frappé drinking, 4 cylinder driving hippsters...
Gone are the days of dad buying his car (commodore/falcon) and loving it like a new born.
I think the aussie obsession/pride of 'our' locally built cars has gone.

Yeah pretty accurate, most people i know are a bunch of hipster phaggots driving around in 4 cylinder Japanese 'muscle' why dont u just go stick a nice clean weiner in your mouth aswell, nothing excites me about these small buzzboxes nothing at all, the big cars are dying.
 

ari666

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Australians make the best cars for Australian conditions, that is fact.

pretty inaccurate fact. the toyota camry will outlive a commodore/falcon in a high KM race.

The holden developed Zeta platform is whats under the Chevrolet Camaro, one of the best handling cars the us has ever made. and why? because it was Australians who developed it.

LOL, then the americans refined it and made the camaro faster and better than its aussie counterpart:

have a read: Holden VF ute laps Nurburgring in 8m 21s | carsguide.com.au

slower than a renault clio. pretty sad really.


australians build **** cars /story. ford are doing themselves a HUGE favour by going offshore. australias are slack, lazy, and demand too much money for mediocre work.
 

Calaber

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pretty inaccurate fact. the toyota camry will outlive a commodore/falcon in a high KM race.



LOL, then the americans refined it and made the camaro faster and better than its aussie counterpart:

have a read: Holden VF ute laps Nurburgring in 8m 21s | carsguide.com.au

slower than a renault clio. pretty sad really.


australians build **** cars /story. ford are doing themselves a HUGE favour by going offshore. australias are slack, lazy, and demand too much money for mediocre work.

Ari

I think your criticism is wide of the mark.

Please don't try to convince us that those US LHD jobs you convert are better built than Australian cars. Nothing I've ever seen, read or heard has had much of a compliment for Yank vehicles at all. I agree that some of the Korean vehicles are improving in leaps and bounds, but the Camry is built here too, so how does that fit with your analysis of Australian built?
 

commodore665

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pretty inaccurate fact. the toyota camry will outlive a commodore/falcon in a high KM race.



LOL, then the americans refined it and made the camaro faster and better than its aussie counterpart:

have a read: Holden VF ute laps Nurburgring in 8m 21s | carsguide.com.au

slower than a renault clio. pretty sad really.


australians build **** cars /story. ford are doing themselves a HUGE favour by going offshore. australias are slack, lazy, and demand too much money for mediocre work.

Sad but true , it still saddens me that 1200 some employees are going to lose there jobs .
 

ari666

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Ari

I think your criticism is wide of the mark.

Please don't try to convince us that those US LHD jobs you convert are better built than Australian cars. Nothing I've ever seen, read or heard has had much of a compliment for Yank vehicles at all.

yeah, american cars are also pretty ****, BUT their build quality has improved dramatically since the sent a lot of it to china :p
 
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Jesterarts

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This has been a while coming. I am surprised that Ford and GM has hung around this long.

With some luck, once GM is also gone, the government will be able to bugger of luxury car taxes, etc since there won't be a local industry to try and protect.
 
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