244 replies to this topic

[Shiney005]

.................   I do really like the last Commy...     
 
Especially if this weapon come out .......
 
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I have heard that HSV has just trademarked(?) "GTSR". So they may be saving something special for the end.

[Dr Terry]

Bugger all the name plates, its all about someone trying to save Holden If it happens, and when the new owner wants to call the Aussie car anything other than a commodore its fine with me if they continue to build in Australia. I don't care what name plate they put on it.

 

We need to continue to build cars here and support our own local manufactures who supply components and parts to Holden, we desperately need to retain skilled trades people and company's in the automotive industry or we will lose more than a few cars sales per year.

 

The Holden's of late are a world class act that we get at half the cost of a comparable European or American equivalent. I don't think I could part with my M3 but the latest weapons from Holden are a very close second in my wish list behind an Aston Marton.

 

With Ford out the back door and Toyota not far behind there isn't much left to keep the car prices and competition down in Australia. 

 

With only one major car manufacturer left in Australia why doesn't our government leaders come to the part and say, from this date on all government cars through out Australia will only be supplied from Holden and give them our full support rather than saying here is a few million because someone in Camberra  reckons it sound like a great idea to get a few more votes at election time.

 

If you go down to the local council you will find Toyota's, Mazda's, Great Wall/wally's, Isuzu, Hyundai, and just about every other manufacturer who make sedans and utes which are in direct competition with our local Holdens. The least represented cars in the fleet are Holden. Wake up polies you simple minded wankers, the answer may be easier than you think. More jobs and manufacturing in Australia equals more income to the ATO and more money for the government polies to waste on overseas field trips or what every they want to call their free holidays.

 

Ha I feel better now.      

Sadly I think the ship has sailed on local car manufacturing. It wasn't the lack of sales that killed the Holden's local factory, the Commodore was still near the top of the sales charts with a 6 year old product, when this decision was made. It was several unrelated things, the so-called 'perfect storm'. These include:

1. Uncompetitive wage structures, not just with Asian countries either, check out how competitive the US & the UK are nowadays.

2. Crippling compliance issues with Government at 3 levels !! Everything from insane local council rates, energy costs (read carbon tax at the time), payroll tax, etc etc. Every dept. of every branch of government has their hands in you pocket if you have the audacity to set up business in Australia.

3. Union control & interference. The recent inquiry into trade union corruption has only touched the tip of the iceberg. Not until trade unions begin working FOR the worker & WITH the employer, will any serious restructure begin in earnest.

4. The international automotive market can no longer support 'niche' models without support from their parent company. Economic rationalisation suggests that we will only have world cars in the future.

5. A government budget crippled by ridiculous welfare costs, unable to continue to pour $billions into a 'black hole' in the vain hope it would someday become profitable, allowing for the above points.

6. The A$ at the time was uncompetitively high. It is now down to a more reasonable 72c (approx). Until the international money scheme had more rational control rather than the current wish-mash, who would invest $billions into it, Would you ??

 

The fact that we were going thru the GFC at the time wasn't a big help either.

 

Dr Terry

[yel327]

I hope Dr Terry is wrong in his predictions, but I am almost certain he is right. The real shame is all the cars we want are and will be produced or at least sold in the USA but the manufacturers won't let us have most of them.

[myss427]

The main issue was when the Monaro went to America, they became aware of Australia, and what we could do with little money and how many products could be made on one line. They had a problem with Hannenburger, got rid of him and started to wreck our exports to the middle east, which was about 40,000 units. They started replacing them with Impalas and chevys at our expense. Then the GFC hit, took all our money and left Holden out to dry, and a million little problems came along and the dollar went up and the decision was made. I blame America for meddling in a profitable company back then.

[Uncle Chop Chop]

Commodore gets built at GMH plant. Gets delivered to HSV factory. Has a few bits and pieces of dress up crap bolted on. Exits factory and is no longer a commodore? Lol

 

Pizza gets bought from pizza shop. Enters human body and has digestive enzymes added. Exits the human body via the rectum and is no longer a pizza?

[Rockoz]

I'll agree with that.

 

I have a Maytag washer & drier at home & a Maytag washer & drier at work, for workwear, overalls, towels etc. 

 

I believe the ones that I have at work are the first 2 Maytag domestic (non coin-slot) machines imported into Australia. My Dad's mate was importing them during the late 70s for laundromats & the armed services etc. & somebody suggested to him to try importing some domestic units for retail & to my knowledge my 2 units are the units imported for compliance etc. I purchased them in 1980 as 2nd hand 'demo' items. The units at home were purchased from the same importer about 2 years later, by which time he was importing them by the container load & selling them thru David Jones etc.

 

All these units have now been in continuous use for 35 & 33 years respectively. Even though they cost me around 2 or 3 times that of 'normal' units, they have more than paid for themselves & at current rate they could possibly out live me !!

 

But I digress.

 

Dr Terry

 

 

I have a few still in service that were installed in the early 70s.

Only had to write off a couple because parts are no longer available from the manufacturer, but can get adaptors from another supplier.

These are on defence sites, and with their age they have certainly earned their purchase price.

Same cant be said for some of the newer stuff that some architect specified less than 10 years ago.

Major repairs and a pita to do work on.

[yel327]

When I built our house 10 years ago we bought all Australian made appliances. Everything was Aussie made Westinghouse. Even the dishwasher was 5 years old at that stage, and I bought a new SS front panel and black plastic top for it so it fitted in the kitchen. Everything is still going: fridge, dishwasher, cooktop, oven, rangehood, clothes drier and washing machine. One item was foreign, a Smeg/Omega microwave. Guess what sh@t itself after 4 years? Had to buy a new Smeg as the location was custom made to fit it. Fingers crossed it is still working today.

[N/A-PWR]

I heard on the radio yesterday,

 

that the over Sea's Billionaire is spending 200 million of his own money to keep GM Australia afloat. 

 

 

I want a New Torana produced first. 

[S pack]

I heard on the radio yesterday,

 

that the over Sea's Billionaire is spending 200 million of his own money to keep GM Australia afloat. 

 

 

I want a New Torana produced first. 

Perhaps he should buy GM USA and kick out the useless cnuts running the whole show!

 

Unfortunately I can't see our short sighted Govt wanting to jump in and throw money at his bold venture.

They refused to continue support for our current manufacturers why should they suddenly change their minds and help this bloke?

[Shiney005]

The Commodore won't be built here by anyone after 2017 because of the points raised in post #102.

[Tyre biter]

This article makes for compelling listening/reading: http://autoexpert.co...ar-industry-die

 

Essentially, regardless of the quality of the local product and the value for money in relation to comparing Australian manufactured cars against the world's, John Cadogan asserts that Holden, Ford, et al simply do/did not manufacture the platforms the market wants and that it has wanted for the past few decades: in the main - small cars and SUVs. Rather, they stayed wedded to 'traditional Australian platforms' (large sedans) and bugger me - their empires collapsed because of the intransigence embedded in those company's history.  This jingoistic outlook brought about loss of market share and what best illustrates their business model to be buried in the glory days was the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-payer derived direct funding or taxation relief that has made no difference to the end result - capitulation.

 

In a nut-shell, Cadogan says the manufacturers built the wrong cars, we the Australian public bought less and less of what they built, and the money gifted to the car makers by governments was squandered on an aged, decayed and most likely dead business model. 

 

And now old mate Guido Dumarey wishes to perpetuate this approach by throwing millions of more dollars at it including further tax-payer derived funding - the funding of the enterprise is not the problem - the car platform/s he wishes to reinstate are.  Reminds me of the saying (I think) by a fellow named Barry Staw (1976) : escalating commitment to a failed course of action...

 

Of course I wish Mr Dumarey well, I truly do, but I think it is a folly: he will have significant issues with not only accessing components and drive-trains at all let alone at volume cost, but he will also be building a 'premium' car as he describes it using a platform and architecture which is now aged.  I also think he will suffer the significant and likely risk of folks not wishing to buy a non-genuine knock-off with unproven QA from a start-up company with no brand familiarity in this market and whose tenure in the Australian marketplace will most likely be perceived as highly dubious - folks will think "Jeepers if GM, Ford, Toyota and Mitsubishi couldn't make it work then what chance does this johnny-come-lately company who I have never heard of have?"

 

Perhaps, like me, many would not part with their hard-earned on a knock-off unless perhaps they were Great Wall Motors cheap - which of course they can't be given the component specification, the country of origin/manufacture and the stated claims to build a premium product.  But I think this consideration is moot - they venture will never see the light of day because (hopefully) those with decent business and financial acumen will in fact acknowledge what has transpired and refuse to escalate a commitment to a failed course.

 

Cheers, TB

[yel327]

His only chance is to significantly up the LHD export versions.

 

Australians will buy big cars but they want V8's. V8's still sell well, 6cyl's are unwanted. However the volume of sales clearly doesn't justify building them here, so exporting is the key.

[Dasman56]

One of the major problems was the car industries troubles made good headlines in the media and a lot of the information out there was just plain wrong. Countries that have a car industry do one of two things. They put a tax on imported vehicles to encourage companies to build cars locally. Or if they want to put free trade agreements in with countries that build a lot of cars they quite often invest in the local car industry with tax payer funded money to support local jobs. The millions of dollars Holden spent 2 years lobbying for was reported in the papers as another tax payer funded bail out several times over. It was money that was never secured but perception was more money again and again. The amount by the way  was only equal to you not paying stamp duty if you bought a locally made vehicle. That’s it!!!! Tony Abbot sat down with the managing director of Holden and told him their problem was you don’t make a small four cylinder. Holden had been making the Cruze for 2 years and he had no clue. Cars imported to Australia have almost no import tax. When the Australian manufactures import cars to those countries they are hit with massive import tax and therefore cannot compete. We had a vehicle import agreement with Korea. They sent us thousands of cars. When Holden sent them several hundred Statemans. They landed on the Docks in Korea. They made a rule on the spot that vehicles with engines over 2.5L capacity get 100% Import tax. As you can imagine they were very hard to sell after that. I could go on but it would just get boring. Probably why you never heard about it in the papers in the first place.

Edited by Dasman56, 01 January 2016 - 02:14 PM.

[Rockoz]

The way I read the reports at the time was TA wanted a guarantee from GMH on their long term plans for manufacturing in Australia.

GMH had no long term plans and closure was likely. Whether or not they got the money.

 

Why pay into something that isnt going to last long anyway?

 

I agree our government should have been buying local.

But then the costs are often dearer and the public would complain they are wasting money.

 

How do you win in a situation like that?

 

Anyway I blame the unions.

[S pack]

The way I read the reports at the time was TA wanted a guarantee from GMH on their long term plans for manufacturing in Australia.

GMH had no long term plans and closure was likely. Whether or not they got the money.

 

Why pay into something that isnt going to last long anyway?

 

I agree our government should have been buying local.

But then the costs are often dearer and the public would complain they are wasting money.

 

How do you win in a situation like that?

 

Anyway I blame the unions.

Don't forget about the Free Trade Agreements the Govt has with various countries, our trading partners. I suspect these agreements compel the Govt to purchase a minimum quota of vehicles manufactured in these various countries.

[Dr Terry]

Don't forget about the Free Trade Agreements the Govt has with various countries, our trading partners. I suspect these agreements compel the Govt to purchase a minimum quota of vehicles manufactured in these various countries.

But the Govt. itself doesn't purchase any cars directly, the importers do. These importers are either private companies like Ateco or Inchscape of subsidiaries of the manufacturers themselves.

 

Dr Terry

[S pack]

But the Govt. itself doesn't purchase any cars directly, the importers do. These importers are either private companies like Ateco or Inchscape of subsidiaries of the manufacturers themselves.

 

Dr Terry

Dr Terry

 

I am aware our Govt's (at all tiers) don't purchase or import motor vehicles direct from any manufacturer and I didn't intend to imply they did.

 

Cheers

Dave.

 

 

[S pack]

Just to clear up confusion though, the govt DOES directly purchase cars yes?

IE what your saying is they dont directly buy cars from say Korea? They buy Korean made cars that are available locally?

Cheers. 

 

Correct, the Govt doesn't buy direct from any manufacturer.

 

AFAIK the Govt and/or it's Depts call tenders for the supply of motor vehicles that meet a specified criteria or specification to suit an intended purpose.

 

I remember reading an article some years ago about a new Vehicle Dealer supplying a tender for XYZ make and model Aussie made vehicles for a Govt Dept.

His tender wasn't successful however he wasn't impressed to say the least when he was inadvertently leaked information about the successful tender which was to supply similar spec imported vehicles at a price that was greater than his tender.

 

Whatever happened to the Govt campaigns promoting Buy Australian Made?

 

There has to be deals done in these not so free Free Trade Agreements.

We scratch your back with a wire brush and you scratch our back with a toothbrush.

Edited by S pack, 01 January 2016 - 07:25 PM.

[Dasman56]

Our government just needs to stand up for us a bit more. They have no balls. Something like adding 100% tax on the spot did happen yet we stand by and do nothing. Yet stipulating a govt Australian flag must be Australian made was thrown out and labelled as offensive. Do you think the USA get their flags made overseas?

[Dasman56]

Also more relevant to the topic. I do think a rwd large car can still be profitable in Australia. GM are making their decisions based on several manufacturing regions. Australia closing helped opel stay open. They have more to concider when making decisions.