Bye Bye GM & Toyota Pie

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I can't confess to knowing anything about Holden, despite it's impact in Australia for many many years. However consumers spoke for them, sales have been dropping rapidly all the while their quality control and designs got worse and worse.

This has been coming for more than a decade, it will be interesting to see what the P platers will drive now!
 

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Doctor Feel said:
..... sales have been dropping rapidly all the while their quality control and designs got worse and worse. ...
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Sales have been dropping rapidly due to the high Aussie dollar and the lowest import tariffs on cars for any country that manufactures cars.

What do you base your claims of poor quality and poor design on? Have you driven the new VF Commodore?
 
Very sad day. It seems the Cruze was too late to the party. Relying on the commodore when Australians had been moving to smaller cars for more than a decade was always going to end badly.

Just pinched this chard off Wikipedia:

Australian_large_car_sales_1991_onwards.png
 
Follows a trend with petrol prices too.

I have a new Colorado and the latest VE, both have been uninspiring compared to their competitors I bought local to support the industry. Ah well.
 
Jumbo said:
What are my tax dollars going to get pumped into now without the "Holden Levy"?, maybe we can spend some more on the arts or increase the dole!
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It's OK, the federal government subsidies the big banks ($7.2B) and the mining industry ($4.5B) so Gail Kelly and Gina Rinehart will continue to enjoy spending your tax dollars.
 
Sad for the SA culture? As someone whose family have owned Datsuns/Nissans (and more recently Renault) since the 70s, this doesn't really seem like that big a deal.

The meathead motor-racing marketing and `made in Australia' BS is a disincentive for me if anything. Also * Central Districts and * Geelong.
 
Portia said:
As someone whose family have owned Datsuns/Nissans (and more recently Renault) since the 70s, this doesn't really seem like that big a deal.
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What, that you won't be able to buy an Australian made car or that thousands of workers will become unemployed and the Australian economy will take a big hit?
 

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1) Australian made car, yep big deal
2) People become unemployed all the time. Businesses fold all the time. People reskill and move on. It is not like the signs haven't been on the wall for decades.
3) What big hit?
 
Portia said:
1) Australian made car, yep big deal
2) People become unemployed all the time. Businesses fold all the time. People reskill and move on. It is not like the signs haven't been on the wall for decades.
3) What big hit?
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Its different when its thousands of people from the same company becoming suddenly unemployed. I understand the sentiment though, as I am also quite apathetic towards this (actually lets be honest, I'm apathetic towards everything outside my "bubble").

I must always feel for workers who suffered for management's mistakes though. My basic belief is all bosses are sillys except for me (assuming I'm ever boss of anything... maybe one day I'll be a moderator on an internet forum or something).
 
Lurk3r said:
Its different when its thousands of people from the same company becoming suddenly unemployed.
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I am pretty sure that four years notice doesn't count as sudden by any measure.
 
The workers brokered a deal to freeze pay and conditions to continue the work. They haven't been honoured by Holdens or the Fed Government.

It's ok to say re training, but what's the economic policy to re generate the jobs that will be lost? There could be 10,00 direct and indirect jobs lost. I personally can't see where the SA Economy can cover this.
 
GM Detroit are useless and the Aussie marketing team isn't much better. They wont build cars that people want so this day was always going to happen.

I am a believer in supporting manufacturing because the spin offs via the multiplier effect are huge and you need to make or grow things or mine things to support the service industries. Services just don't spring up to support other services. The government has to support innovation - but not try and pick winners. A good chunk of the expensive well paid jobs in services - accounting, management consultants, banking/finance have manufacturers as their large clients. You don't write a management report about how to write management reports.

I used to be a believer in free trade. But I gave up on that a few years ago. They are just complicated legal documents that do very little to even the playing field. I am a believer in freer but fair trade - fair and reasonable trade, not academic philosophical stuff that lacks commonsense.

Today was a great example of what I have called since 2001 - the Doctrine of Drongoism. Our stupid politicians were carrying on like drongos trying to blame each other for the call out of Detroit. Tomorrow I would like to see some brain power being used to see how to transition out of this over the next few years. It's not the 3,000 Holden workers I'm worried about. Its the 50,000 who work at Toyota and the component industries who are efficient that are going to be affected because the economies of scale are not going to be there in the future to keep them going and the 250,000 people in total who are supported by the car industry who will have to find new income activities. The good old multiplier effect coming into play

If the SA government have half a brain they have to give this guy a decent brief to help restructure SA manufacturing over the next few years and do what he says and not worry about trying to score cheap political points and want to get the glory for doing something.

Professor Goran Roos ( of Sweden) was a thinker in residence for a bit of 2011 and some of 2012 and was then appointed by the SA government to be the Chairman of the SA Advanced Manufacturing Council.

Here is his profile from when he was a thinker in residence on the left are links to his 220 page report he produced and other stuff about his thinker in resident term.
http://www.thinkers.sa.gov.au/thinkers/roos/who.aspx

Here is his profile and video from the SA Advanced Manufacturing Council website.
http://www.dmitre.sa.gov.au/manufac...ced_manufacturing_council/professor_gran_roos

Listen closely to what he says between 5:30 and 7:00 about service jobs and what the good ones are dependent on. He did this video in late 2011 when the mining boom was still on and gave 2 good examples of how SA could copy/follow to position its manufacturing to take advantage of any mining boom - Norway and Canada - 2 countries industry which I have a good knowledge. He is bang spot on about how SA should could see manufacturing could really take advantage when the mining boom comes around next time.




He was on Lateline The Business on 28th of October and it was a good interview about the need for a strong manufacturing industry in Australia. The 6 minute interview is at the link below. He makes a good point about Switzerland who is a more expensive country to manufacture things than Australia yet it sells manufactured goods to China not resources and has a bigger trade surplus with China than Oz does. Why?? because they make expensive but high quality stuff that China needs and wants and is prepared to pay for it. I have said to people for years we need to make high quality stuff that people want and are prepared to pay and they are prepared to pay the air freight to get it to them. Medical, scientific instrumentation and precision equipment etc. Low volume, high quality, precision manufacturing items that are expensive and requires high skilled employees to make those items.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-28/professor-yuran-roos-talks-to-the-business/5051096

He also did an interview on Lateline in late 2010 about innovation being the key, not research.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/business/items/201010/s3049088.htm
 
Doctor Feel said:
I can't confess to knowing anything about Holden, despite it's impact in Australia for many many years. However consumers spoke for them, sales have been dropping rapidly all the while their quality control and designs got worse and worse.

This has been coming for more than a decade, it will be interesting to see what the P platers will drive now!
Click to expand...


It doesn't matter REH, the problem for Ford and Holden is the brand perception in Australia as the post above shows this attitude quite clearly. Australian's don't like buying Australian made products in certain sectors and will buy anything from overseas as "it must be better". Given the fact people will spout on about Australian cars as s**t and poor quality whilst driving a ******* Hyundai etc it always cracks me up. I'm all for buying whatever car you want, it is a personal decision but the loathing about how poor our cars are when they are not (The VF especially the higher up models are world class and the prices are excellent) does irk me. It swung around after the early 2000's when imported cars became affordable for all suddenly you had to be driving something not Australian so you can go tell you friends oh it's european. It's exactly the same as the beer market here, will you drink a west end at a pub or a Stella even if a West End is a good draught beer can't be seen having that red piss yet you go overseas and they don't have this self loathing of the products they make.

What does my head in the most in Australia, is the people's love affair with Mazda's. They are good cars yes, luxury no but for some reason here we fall for the marketing and because it's japanese and imported wow it must be really good and luxurious yet the rest of the world can see them for what they are.
 
wharfie_1870 said:
It's OK, the federal government subsidies the big banks ($7.2B) and the mining industry ($4.5B) so Gail Kelly and Gina Rinehart will continue to enjoy spending your tax dollars.
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And the $5B pa of public money pumped into private health insurance to keep doctors happy and further debilitate the public health sector.
 
StrappingTape said:
It doesn't matter REH, the problem for Ford and Holden is the brand perception in Australia as the post above shows this attitude quite clearly. Australian's don't like buying Australian made products in certain sectors and will buy anything from overseas as "it must be better". Given the fact people will spout on about Australian cars as s**t and poor quality whilst driving a ******* Hyundai etc it always cracks me up. I'm all for buying whatever car you want, it is a personal decision but the loathing about how poor our cars are when they are not (The VF especially the higher up models are world class and the prices are excellent) does irk me. It swung around after the early 2000's when imported cars became affordable for all suddenly you had to be driving something not Australian so you can go tell you friends oh it's european. It's exactly the same as the beer market here, will you drink a west end at a pub or a Stella even if a West End is a good draught beer can't be seen having that red piss yet you go overseas and they don't have this self loathing of the products they make.

What does my head in the most in Australia, is the people's love affair with Mazda's. They are good cars yes, luxury no but for some reason here we fall for the marketing and because it's japanese and imported wow it must be really good and luxurious yet the rest of the world can see them for what they are.
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I agree there is a cultural cringe element, but that isn't the main reason why 75-80% of new cars bought in Oz the last few years have been imported cars. Price, quality, styling and size of car are the main drivers.

My brother is a mechanic. He started at 16 working on Ferraris and Mercs, then BMW's, has owned many different cars, bought his wife a Toyota Corolla a few years ago, said its the best small car on the market and scoured the net for a long time and brought a 1999 BMW station wagon from Qld about 4 years ago to be the family car after he sold his Nissan Oz made ute. His complaint about Oz made cars is that the quality isn't up to scratch for the price you pay. He also is a Port man, so I asked him about Renault's quality and he gave them a bare pass.

I'm stuffed if I know why GM stopped making the Monaro a decade ago after only 3 or 4 years on the market when the economy was booming, petrol price was cheap and the demand for the V8 and V6 models was there.

I'm still stuffed why an Australian 4 wheel drive has never taken off. Geez we have the country roads and desert roads to properly test one here and design and built one for conditions. The fact that just about every blackfella who lives out in the deep bush, I have worked with over the last 20+ years wants a Toyota Landcruiser says we should have made them here at Altona and not imported them.

Heard Simon Hackett from Internode talk about the issue and he reckons its the right time to buy out GM's plants and manufacture high quality small electric cars. He did say a few years ago he bought a Tesla because it was the only electric car that went fast enough and was stylish enough for him to consider.
 
wharfie_1870 said:
It's OK, the federal government subsidies the big banks ($7.2B) and the mining industry ($4.5B) so Gail Kelly and Gina Rinehart will continue to enjoy spending your tax dollars.
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What subsidies are those?
 
Mazdas are hugely luxurious compared to many other cars in the same price range. Nice leather seats, BOSE sound etc. I had an 2007 SP23 for a few years, recently bought a Prado and traded the Mazda in though.

The problem I found with Holden though was that their cheap cars were not the same value as cheap cars from other manufacturers. The Cruze was a total lemon, and the Barina totally lost its popularity after around 2003. My other half had a 2000 barina citi, it was the worst quality piece of s**t she has ever owned. She recently bought a 2013 Swift GL, great little car.

The other problem with the holden range of smaller cars is the little fact they are immensely ugly. The smaller car market is dominated by females, so the one thing you absolutely need to nail is the style and 'cuteness'.
 
RussellEbertHandball said:
Heard Simon Hackett from Internode talk about the issue and he reckons its the right time to buy out GM's plants and manufacture high quality small electric cars. He did say a few years ago he bought a Tesla because it was the only electric car that went fast enough and was stylish enough for him to consider.
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Yep, thats a much better option than continuing to subsidise the same old s**t in a flooded marketplace.
 
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