The " Holden " Era Ends !

For seventy-two years the Holden badge was a source of pride because it was the car that was designed and built in Australia.  Model changes brought buyers to the car showrooms and it was an Australian workforce that produced these cars from massive factories in Melbourne and Adelaide. Year after year they dominated Australian roads.

We ignored the fact that Holden was the Australian subsidiary of General Motors, at that time the world's biggest car maker.  Eventually, things settled into a competition between Holden and Ford and supremacy was settled on the racing track at Mount Panorama.  Patrons became either " Holden " or " Falcon " enthusiasts.

When the Japanese entered the car trade the American industry faced competition from a smaller, cheaper range of quality built cars and General Motors was forced to seek bankruptcy protection. When it emerged as a slimmed down company, its interest in its Australian subsidiary withered.  It failed to promote the Australian built car as its export model and began looking for subsidies from the Australian government.   The writing was on the wall as the motor trade evolved into a world car industry.

Australia pumped over two billion dollars into Holden to keep the brand alive and preserve those well paying production jobs but eventually the car factories in Australia closed.  The car General Motors now offers as the Commodore equivalent wears a Chevrolet badge and finally GM has announced its total withdrawal from Australia.

In many respects, Australia is better off without car manufacturing plants within its borders.  It no longer needs to  limit imports to preserve local manufacturing and we are  customers of this world trade in more sophisticated cars.  The Japanese Toyota is now the biggest world car maker, but it is under pressure from South Korea and India and an ever growing China.   To complicate world car production, we seem on the cusp of changing to electric vehicles and leaving the driving to computers.

The decline of the local car manufacturing industry has had the result of Australians driving newer, safer cars because competition in the world car industry has driven down prices and made manufacturers more competitive.  The cars produced today contain safety features and crumple zones that preserve life in a crash.  We are now valued customers of this world car manufacturing consortium which is competing for our custom.

Perhaps a time to recognise that with a population of just twenty-five million people we lacked the home market size to support an independent car industry.  General Motors needed to concentrate its effort to preserve its American home market of over two hundred million people and closure of the Holden subsidiary was inevitable.

We live in an ever changing world and it is change that brings with it benefits and opportunities.  We need to carefully evaluate change when it happens to determine how it will affect the outcome in this country  The end of Holden is not the disaster some people suppose  !