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Whose company????
Did you read your own words?
If Holden was just re-badging cars from other companies (and charging customers a premium for that) then we are better off buying the original brand. Why should that company be maximising its profits from our wallets with our approval.
Just think about this - Years ago you were either Holden or Furd - Footy or Football - Meat pie or Choko roll, Then along came Toyota.
Toyota proved you could manufacture cars in Australia and make a go of it - why - Strong effective management .
Point is - in a few years time Holden will be just a distant memory whereas Toyota and others will still be going strong. But - who will proudly identify with say - Mazda - or Kia!
If Holden moved manufacturing off shore it may have survived, that's what I'm saying. Having our own brand built in another country to the same standards is maximising profits. There are a lot of manufacturers that do this exact thing.
How many companies rebadge their cars for different markets? Works for them. When Holden were exporting, they weren't sold in those other countries as Holdens. What's the difference between what Chev were doing with the VE? Called it a Lumina and the Statesman the Caprice.
Toyota already had a factory in Japan that was successful, Holden only had Australia.
If Holden moved manufacturing off shore it may have survived
A few manufacturers were "jumping into bed" with each other, to try and open up their options....eg Nissan/Ford....Ford/Mazda as well as Holden/Toyota....And I think Ford/Nissan were the first...So honestly can people say this was part of the demise of Holden?
not in total but i think GMH made poor choices in rebadging Daewoo and calling it a Holden. So many problems with Daewoos it ain't funny. At least with other car makers they chose manufacturers that make a decent product on the most part.A few manufacturers were "jumping into bed" with each other, to try and open up their options....eg Nissan/Ford....Ford/Mazda as well as Holden/Toyota....And I think Ford/Nissan were the first...So honestly can people say this was part of the demise of Holden?
Holden was doing the right thing with exporting the Monaro to USA and building the big VE was to do with selling it to the USA, but Obama started printing money and that made our Dollar rise up and this destroyed the market exporting utes and sedans to the USA, if the Aussie Dollar was high Holden would of made half it's Commodores for export to the USA.I agree with Not an Abba Fan. Australia couldn't support car manufacturing on low profit margins. Our population has for a long time not been able to sell enough vehicles locally to make manufacturing viable. Holden since the late 80s relied on exports to keep the business making money. I dare say export numbers must have fallen although I can not confirm that. I only know what we studied at uni in the early 2000's when it really became Holden was going to eventually close. The Gov's pumped millions over many years into Holden to keep them operating. IMO I think Holden was always going to struggle in a market swamped with cheap imports across the world. A mid ranged price car in todays market is going to be hard sell, especially when you can get decent European cars at not a great deal more than Holden's which lets face it were not built for longevity, since the H series ended. The cars that are big sellers down here and have been for years are small SUV's, large SUV's, dual cab utes and small - med cars that have demonstated themselves as being reliable in the long-term. Very few people would say a bad thing about Toyota's, yet 100s of people I have worked with and befriended would say Holden's are really just cheap junk. IMO it's only the die-hard fans who actually believe Holden's are a high quality product. If people disagree, then I say stiff sht, because if Holden's were built well we wouldn't be seeing 100s of threads with people having issues with VE's and VF's which are still relatively new compared to some other brands that have older cars that still have relatively few problems...
I noticed someone said it's the fault of Australian citizens Holden folded but really new car sales on lot of brands have fallen over the years because it is becoming increasingly hard to buy a brand new car because very few people can afford them. And lets face it a new car is a pretty poor investment, given the moment you drive out the show room you lose $4k.
Holden trying to reidentify themselves with a car that looks like a Mondeo or Mazda I think is a recipe for disaster. IMHO they would have been better off keeping something like the VF but build it in the States where it can be made a lot cheaper simply because of the numbers they can produce and sell locally as well as export. On another note I drove past Motors Holden yesterday on the bus and I saw a fair few brand new cars in the yard; only thing was I couldn't tell if they were the new "Commodore" as they like to call it or if they were another brand, as everything looked the same.