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Holden Factory

Nitro_X

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Did you know the VE body is fully galvanised before painting?
I discovered this a few years back...me like, coz it shouldn't rust.

Shame the factory is closing in 2017 (along with Ford and Toyota) this is going to have a big impact on our economy.
It's not just the direct consequences of the factory closure, but also the indirect consequences, for other Australian businesses/suppliers.
Australia is already a net consumer nation, meaning, we consume more than we produce, if it wasn't for our mining and natural resources it would be even worse.



 
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c2105026

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Did you know the VE body is fully galvanised before painting?
I discovered this a few years back...me like, coz it shouldn't rust.

Shame the factory is closing in 2017 (along with Ford and Toyota) this is going to have a big impact on our economy.
It's not just the direct consequences of the factory closure, but also the indirect consequences, for other Australian businesses/suppliers.
Australia is already a net consumer nation, meaning, we consume more than we produce, if it wasn't for our mining and natural resources it would be even worse.


You can blame the unions. You can blame inept, short-sighted Holden management. You can blame greedy globalisation. But it doesn't matter. Its been a long time coming. Ever since plants started shutting down in the 80s, there was only one way the whole thing was going to go.

On another perspective - Australia is unique in that we are a large 'western' country with a relatively small population, a long long way from other large western countries. Now countries around 20-30 million, and smaller, do have their own auto industry. Belgium, Hungary, Canada come to mind. But they don't have their very own unique platforms and models like we did. We 'could' have changed the lines and started building smaller Focus/Corolla/Astra type vehicles but global factories for these vehicles were already meeting demand for this market. So why invest extra in extra small car capacity in Australia? There will be no return on it for the global company.

People might say we could focus on the niche RWD V8 sedan market. But....who do we sell it to? The Pontiac GTO (aka Holden Monaro) didn't really take off in the US from what I recall. And besides, the US are more interested in SUVs and small cars. We could sell to the EU but there you are up against the BMW 5 series and Merc E-Class. The global market for a cheap, large RWD sedan may well not justify keeping on the factories in Australia.

It will be sad to see it go, but its just part of change. Economy changes all the time. Our lives change all the time. We need to look at the things we can do with the environment we have. We have a decent education system, so we could look at education, science and technology. Medicine, healthcare. Mathematics. Renewable energy. Future technologies. Agricultural research.

Its not the end. It could well be a whole new beginning :)
 
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markovr

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ok we have killed our car industry ...how could we have saved it? What would have had to happen to keep our industry alive....or is it a case of us being unable to compete at any level with asian labour....arent cars made by robots and limited labour used? fat cats in high paying jobs in management dont seem to have diminished.
If you listen to our experts it is our fault for not buying brand new cars every 2 years and keeping old forms running for as long as we can ...in the next breath they say our car manufacturers havent adapted to demand......really? or is it our lifestyle these days we have to get the most efficient sedan small body cars imaginable but we can blow whatever it takes to keep our truck style 4wd alive and well because they are big and safe and fun on weekends....or is it the media that tell us whatever they choose to keep us buying their papers or watching their programs that make you watch their ads that have slowly through many decades broken the back of the car industry and then blamed someone else to keep the rumor mill ticking over and sustain the bullshit industry that is the australian media.....just watch the news... doom and gloom and manufactured stories based on small amounts of fact and never having to answer to anyone for telling lies to get peoples interest.
So what is it
 
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there's so many factors... but the main ones:

Manufacturing costs. It wasn't just "fat cats in high paying management jobs". The production line workers were paid nearly 6 figure salaries! Not to mention their workplace conditions.

Holden stupidly not building cars that people wanted to buy! This is a critical factor. The market shifted. The Korean's and Japanese (primarily) had the products the Australian market wanted. Holden did not. And they didn't change with the market. The re-badged imports they have to compete with demand simply aren't as good. Over-priced and lack quality and refinement.

Relying on govt. subsidies. In the economic climate of the last 10 years, the billions of dollars of govt. subsidies was never going to be maintained.

Basically, the writing was on the wall for a very VERY long time. Holden, both management and workers (along with their union), had more than enough time to adapt and change. Had they done that, things might have been different.
 

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I think it's a combination of all the above plus more.

One thing though, is I remember a big knob from GM in the US visiting the Holden plant and being impressed at how efficient the plant operated, particularly for a comparatively small scale car manufacturer (on a world scale). And I'm sure Ford & Toyota would have been in a similar level.
I don't know enough about pay levels, executive benefits etc to comment on that part.

However to add to what has been posted by markovr, there also has been a change in culture over the years. The old 'proudly Aussie made' no longer has any importance anymore - and that's not just cars, it's all products. Australians in general no longer have any sort of loyalty or pride in their own local products. Personally I feel that's a sad sign of the times, but from an economic/sustainability point of view, I guess it's just a fairy tale we can't afford to hold onto anymore. We used to proudly buy our own, despite our cars having terrible build quality, seriously lacking both features and technology compared to their overseas equivalents. The build quality of Australian cars has come ahead in leaps and bounds since the early days. Ok they still aren't quite the same level as a some of the Euro or Jap cars, but the build quality gap between a similarly priced Euro or Jap car isn't that big anymore. Whilst they aren't cutting edge technology, they aren't that far behind anymore and offer most of the creature comforts, drivers aids, safety features and options available on far more expensive Euro cars.

Also Australia used to be fairly isolated from the rest of the world, whereas now we have opened our doors to products from all over the world. Our local manufacturing industry is now playing with the big boys. And it's not just Australia experiencing this. The big US car giants are also going bust. It's only the fact that the US govt has thrown so much money at the industry and offered loans (that will probably never be fully paid back) that the US car industry is still just managing to stay afloat. Even the Japanese car industry is struggling
Yet Australians are still largely favouring imported cars over the local cars.
 

Nitro_X

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Yeah I agree, it's a combination of multiple factors.
GM & Chrysler in the US were bailed out by government during the GFC.

I've read there could be a 'sub-prime credit' problem brewing in the US due to a significant increase in auto loans, trying to pump up the economy through credit.

Australians demand high wages because we have high living standards with high living costs, and our energy costs are also very high which makes it difficult to compete with lower cost based economies and/or higher population densities.
For a large country with a developed modern economy our population is very small compared to many other countries but it's also concentrated around the coastal fringes because a lot of our land area is arid or desert.
Then add the fact of geographical distance and transportation costs of goods offshore.

It would help us if we became much more self sufficient in a wider range of manufacturing, we have the resources to do it but everyone seems obsessed with buying and selling over priced houses!
 

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For GM is cheaper to import Asian build cars, just cheap labor. In the US, the GTO and the G8 still has a strong following. From all GMs they keep their value pretty nicely. GM failed to market properly the vehicle. Up today, nobody knows much from the Holden-Pontiac and the SS. People looks the VF like is a FWD Malibu, there are hardly next to none in the dealers. With the Aussie Dollar so low, I will sell the SS at a grate price. GM refuses to, just spoon feeding the crowd.

To me, the main reason is labor and perhaps taxes. Cheaper to import to Oz.

GM pushes trucks to no end, people buys them because they get good deals but a lot of people prefer a performance saloon. What you get instead is a lame ass FWD. So is logical to get a truck.

Heck, just bought a 2016 Colorado to replace my 13 Impala. Was cheaper than buying a low end 2016 Impala.
 

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The free market economy killed your auto manufacturing in Aussie, add on top of that GM and the GFC and it's effectively dead and buried. I honestly think what happened in Aussie probably had the least influence in the overall decision.

Happened here in NZ in the 90's when we went to a free market model and dropped all our tariffs. There are plenty of other countries/manufacturers that are still protected/subsidised.

The idiots running GM have a lot to answer for.
 

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Sadly, you guys do not have the real money making machine and is called the Military Industrial Complex. To the point that we outsource pretty much all the stuff we make. We rather buy a Jap car; let the poor saps worry about how to make it for next to nothing.
 

markovr

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When you say millitary does it have any relationship to the necessity for the US to be at war with a country on a regular basis to keep homeland industries healthy and artifically keeping the economy in a better state than it should be?...or the exhorbitant payments the govt and their cronies make to the whole millitary supply industry and contractors involved to keep the wars going?
 
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