Holden no more: 600 jobs go, 10 yr support.

I really doubt PSA were such great managers or had such great foresight that they flipped an unprofitable Opel into a profitable Opel.

So, I’d guess PSA accounting principles were probably the only meaningful difference between them and GM. But that doesn’t make them more virtuous than other multinationals. All humans cheat on their taxes, some are conservative cheats while others are aggressive cheats and maybe PSA is a conservative cheat as compared to GM. Regardless, cheating is not a virtue

As to GM making meaningful money from Holden, by all accounts GM we hamstringing Holden from freely exporting its product globally, especially to the USA. GM wouldn’t be the first company to inhibit internal competition between their subsidiaries only to do themselves out of a market as a real competitor sells a better product. And GM wouldn’t be the first to sell a subsidiary and then see the buyer shift it into decent profit once the hamstringing was gone... but GM retired the brand and saved such embarrassment

 

Great, poor, mediocre, fkn terrible - they are all relative and probably several levels in front of GM when it comes to anything other than the LHD NA market.

I was meaning referring to meaningful money from Opel/Vauxhall. As for Holden - profit they made since the mid 70's (and there was a fktonne of it, especially when you stripped out all the royalties and other GM taxes along the way) was despite GM, not because of it. You are on the right track with exports. I did find it particularly galling that Holden was paying royalties on each and every Zeta car produced back to GM for the use of it's IP, even though the program was 100% funded from Holden budget and developed by Holden. Parts were subbed out to other GM engineering studio's but that time/resource was invoiced to Holden.

Hannenburger had assembled an elite group to sell Holden over seas, mainly in the middle east but also was starting to move into South America amongst other areas. They were very successful and starting to gather great momentum when GM decided Detroit knew best, retired Hannenburger, installed Mooney (with a brief to shut it down but the damn thing kept making money during the GFC that fkded that plan). Mooney did manage to cut a heap of costs by shutting down the export office and replacing it with some interns 1/2 a world away at Rencen Detroit. There is no doubt the GFC would have put a huge dent into exports either way but there is equally no doubt that a group of (not quite) college graduates 15,000 away trying to sell a product they have never seen in person had zero chance of getting it back to even a fraction of what things were.

 

Two realistic posts by members who know their Holden history .
What happened to the Holden demise blame game being attributed to ScoMo, Hockey, Abbott and all the other capitalist running dogs in Canberra.

Dave Buttner’s sudden departure due to ‘personal reasons’ now appears obvious that the final nail was not hammered in just last week. His buying a HiLux within days of quitting says it all.

In 15 years time, Holden will be remembered as ‘once upon a time’, like BMC/Leyland, if at all.

 

We t on a bit of a cruise this weekend

 

Are you all now quarantined for 14 days?

 

Is anyone doing commodore cruises these days ?
Would be keen for Sydney cruise if someone organised it...

 

With Holden, it will be 'memories', BMC/Leyland is still 'nightmares'...

 

I do them on my own now and again but I'm thinking of giving it away as the fellow who organises them really shits me.




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Not if you're Ron Burgundy, his experiences appear to fall into the Leyland catergory.






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Burnt and scared

 

Just because Holden has closed, doesn't mean cruises will stop.

Half the problem with organising cruises, is making sure the riff raff doesn't stuff it up for decent people, that actually do the sensible thing

 

With GM having rid itself of Opel, and clearly planning similar action for Holden, I now wonder if the alleged talks with Inchcape might have seen a change in fortunes for the Holden name. We might have seen PSA models not available here, sold under the Holden banner, though their sales prospects are uncertain. These days, if it ain't Jap, Korean or an SUV/truck, it doesn't sell here.

 

Plenty of Euro non-gerlytrux too ... also, their share of the market may have been decreasing due purely to choice but Commodore still bowed-out as number 2 or 3 (ie. when the axe-falling was announced ... 2014 was it?).

I reckon Astra sales, more recently, suffered from the rubbish electricals in TS’s ... they were super popular, just like the Astron-II Magnas, and as a result heaps of people were burned & weren’t going back for more.

 

Would anyone have use for an public instant chat service? I am apart of one now and it needs more members.

 

What ...like a dating app thingo ?

 

discord which is like IRC. its amazing there is much less dribble than here even though its instant

 

DRIVE
26 Feb 2020
Exclusive: Holden dealers meeting with the Prime Minister this morning after rejecting General Motors' initial compensation offer


https://www.drive.com.au/news/exclu...compensation-offer-123308.html?trackLink=SMH0



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While Holden paddles down a river in Egypt - https://www.whichcar.com.au/car-news/holden-dealers-meet-pm-scott-morrison

 

^ It’s not like the 158? dealer groups were unsophisticated investors since they had well paid lawyers going over the franchise agreements in detail and they knew all the clauses inside out.

So it’s not an issue the government should now be involved in by rewriting legislation for their donors...

If the agreements are not being honoured each franchise group should be taking Holden to court.

 

Just coz you have lawyers doesn't mean you can negotiate terms. You just know where the shafting will come from.

Once you're balls deep, you don't have much choice but to soldier on and hope it doesn't burn you.....and here we are.

Will be interesting to see the impact on/of the Unfair Contract Terms laws (for the smaller dealers with less than 20 employees) and the Franchising Code of Conduct for all of them....but that would likely require a class action and/or the ACCC to pursure Holden / GM and will not happen in a hurry.

How they navigate the interim period will be interesting.