Demise of the Australian car industry.

The traditional Australian car manufacturing industry is in trouble. Public taste has swung away from the Holden and Ford family cars because of rising petrol prices, smaller families - and in some cases concern for the planet that dictates " smaller is better ".
In past decades car manufacturing in Australia involved a range of models - from the big sixes and V-eights to smaller four cyclinder cars. This was just too many for the limited Australian market and at one stage government diktat forced a sharing of models. We had the strange arrangement when a model was rebadged and sole as an opposition product. That was short lived, but it's end saw manufacturing contract until GM-Holden only produced the Kingswood in Australia - later this became the Commodore - and Ford restricted production to the Falcon.
The range of four cyclinder cars initially came as imports from GM and Ford plants overseas, but as Asia developed car manufacturing capacity both of the majors sourced their cheaper imports from Korea and watched as they gained a major market share.

Now the sales volume of Commodores and Falcons is dropping and both manufacturers are signalling a loss of jobs and reduced production. Petrol prices are dropping in recent weeks, but this may not bring back buyers for the big family models. The range of four cyclinder cars available is exotic and they are no longer the under powered " buzz boxes " of former years.
The automobile industry is innovative and in next year or so we will see great change. The hybrid petrol/electricity car is now a reality, diesel engines are taking over from petrol in Europe - and the hydrogen fuel cell is rapidly becoming reality.
It must be a worrying time for the management of GM and Ford. Dropping the family car to concentrate of a smaller version would not seem a viable option - and maybe the only answer is a very aggressive export campaign to enhance already established markets in places like the middle east.
The only thing that is certain is that we are going through a period of change. What sort of car emerges is anyone's guess - but the car we drive five years from now will certainly be very different from the car we are driving today !