Crowny
In the mid 1970's, Holden was faced with extremely difficult decisions about which direction to take, principally arising out of actions taken by oil producing countries overseas, which had restricted supplies to world markets and caused serious increases in fuel costs. Car buyers were, for the first time, faced with the need to consider fuel consumption and the vehicles currently under production in Australia were pretty uneconomical. Japanese vehicles had made considerable inroads on the Australian market due to their low price, comparatively high levels of standard equipment and fuel efficiency. Holden, Ford and Chrysler were all forced to re-think the types of vehicles they were going to replace their current models with.
Chrysler became Mitsubishi Australia and the Valiant was killed off in 1978, replaced by the Sigma. Ford had invested heavily in Australianising the Cortina, fitting it with a six cylinder engine, and downsizing the Falcon to produce the more Euro styled XD in 1979. The Falcon remained a comparatively large car, but was far more modern and less American in appearance than its predecessors. Ford also began to upgrade the 250 cube 6 with an alloy head and improved fuel consumption in the XE a couple of years later.
Holden was torn between the WA, retaining the traditional sized Aussie 6, or downsizing to the Euro Commodore to enable better fuel efficiency. The old red motors were torquey but their development potential was limited by their small capacity, OHV rather than OHC design and crude fuel systems. The cost of developing a new car and new engines was more than Holden could cope with at that time. They even toyed with an extended version of the Camira as a replacement for the Kingswood but this idea was canned in favour of the Commodore.
The Commie was chosen because Holden believed that Australians wanted a smaller (though not small) car, rather than the normal size they had been buying up to that time. The Commodore was modern, roomy, stylish and offered the most suitable design for adaptation to the Australian market. As it turned out, the basic design was so weak, road testing of prototypes actually caused the bodies to crack and they required extensive strengthening for our conditions. These sorts of problems led to the development costs of the Commodore greatly exceeding original anticipated costs.
Would the WA have succeeded and saved Holden? Probably not. It was heavily based on the original HQ design, which dated back to the mid to late 60's in its gestation. It would have been difficult to make the car appear more modern and in keeping with the styling of the 1980's and its weight would have cruelled the existing six cylinder engines. Even if Holden had the money to develop it fully as a complete car, it would have looked out of date against its principal competitor, the XD Falcon.
Would the Camira have been built if the WA had proceeded? Most definitely yes, because it represented a modern European car with excellent internal space, handling and braking and was seen as a sensible alternative to a larger model. It was far more modern than the Torana, more fuel efficient and better designed. Unfortunately, it had design faults (like shocking rust traps in the firewall) and was poorly built in Australia which effectively killed it as a serious opponent to its peers. Holden eventually sorted out most of the quality control issues, though the rust traps remained. (I've owned four of them and the rust-ability of the Camira is bloody awful). However, it all came too late for the Camira and it died in 1989, replaced by a Holden version of the Camry (which at that time was a much better car).
Should Holden have developed a fuel injected engine sooner? Yes, they were very late doing so and again, due to lack of money, it was half-hearted and did not sell well in the VK. They needed new, modern engines and body designs, not rehashed 1960's technology, but simply couldn't afford it. Look at the bloody awful four cylinder "Starfire" engine. What a waste of effort that was, but it was all they could afford at the time. It was only by getting agreement with Nissan that Holden was able to properly address the lack of a modern six cylinder engine for the VL in 1986 that their fortunes turned for the better.
For too many years, management at Holden failed to read the market trends overseas and didn't see the tsunami coming. The Australian market was changing and traditional big cars with old fashioned, inefficient six and 8 cylinder engines were soon going to start losing favour with buyers. Large capacities would be acceptable but only if they gave good fuel economy. Holden's didn't and their engines were too old to upgrade to meet new expectations. Later, they made other bad decisions based on unit cost of the imported models and decided to market cars made in Korea rather than Europe. None of the Korean models have ever achieved the sort of quality, engineering standards or competitiveness that the Euro's did and Holden has lost its market share in almost every segment of the market where it once lead or was near the top.
Years of dud decisions have cost the company dearly.
