Lion mauled: How the Holden, Commodore names killed General Motors in Australia
For decades, Holden was Australia’s most popular carmaker but the end of local manufacturing in 2017 should have prompted General Motors to kill off the Holden and Commodore names.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Holden is dead, and so is the presence of General Motors in Australia for the first time since it bought into Adelaide vehicle body-maker Holden in 1931.
But it didn’t have to be that way.
Holden just had to break with its history – and its failure to do so leaves Australian car buyers worse off.
In 1977, a year before it introduced its sleek, European-bodied new Commodore range, Holden released its best known commercial, trading off its reputation as “Australia’s own” carmaker.
“Football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars”. It doesn’t get more ruggedly Aussie than that, does it?
Actually, it does.
General Motors, conceived the jingle as “baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet” in the mid-70s, and variants of it showed in other countries – even South Africa, where GM once imported Aussie Kingswoods as Chevrolets.
But selling its unique Australian-ness, even with a borrowed tune, never did Holden any harm until it ceased making cars Down Under in October 2017.
Holden stole a march on the opposition in 1948 when then-PM Ben Chifley welcomed Australia’s first indigenous car, the Holden 48-215, off the production line at Melbourne’s Fisherman’s Bend and called it “a beauty”.
That moment established a marque that dominated the sales charts into the 1980s, and was consistently one of its strongest performers well after that, and was seared into Australia’s psyche.
Post-war patriotism and prosperity and the innate toughness of its cars built an incredible brand loyalty years before Ford’s Falcon, Chrysler’s Valiant and a host of other competitors encouraged by big tariff walls could hit the streets.
Its record in motor racing, led by nine-time Bathurst winner Peter Brock and champions including Craig Lowndes, Mark Skaife and Jamie Whincup, cemented Holden’s iconic place in our history.
Starting afresh after the Commodore’s demise in October 2017, only 28 months ago, might have saved the GM farm to some extent.
Maybe GM should have renamed Holden after one of its American cousins – say, Chevrolet – and retired the Commodore brand to convince the Holden faithful that 2017 was the dawn of a new era in which Aussie car buyers could access the best products in the GM world.
Instead, the Holden name stayed and GM chose to apply the Commodore badge to a new car sourced from GM’s then-European arm, Opel.
The big Aussie six and V8 rear-wheel drive Commodore was no more and, in its place, came a rebadged mid-sized wagon or (gasp!) hatchback with no V8, no ute and front-wheel drive.
It’s fair to say that Commodore lovers completely freaked.
And, in the glossy ad campaign it used to introduce Australia to its new hero car, Holden said it was looking for “modern explorers” to buy the Commodore, and showed the new car on typically rugged roads carting people to far-flung locations.
There was only one problem. The first panel of text said Holden was looking for “the next Burke and Wills” as a Commodore wagon bashed down a desolate dirt road. Seriously.
Holden also reintroduced the European Astra hatch and Korean-built Astra sedan to its line-up, launched the North American-sourced Equinox and Acadia SUVs and planned to bring in the American Corvette sports car.
GM was trying to give Holden a post-manufacturing life (Burke and Wills faux pas aside) but it could not get past memories of driveways full of chrome-covered Holdens, Brocky, Bathurst and brawny cars that could handle the rough stuff only Australia could dish out.
Holden couldn’t move forward.
Poor sales forced Holden to axe the Commodore and Astra in December last year, with Holden determined to focus on utes and SUVs.
In 2019, Holden sold only 43,176 vehicles in Australia. Five years earlier, while still building Commodores and the less successful Holden Cruze four-cylinder, it sold 106,092.
GM, still burdened by its near collapse during the GFC in 2009, has been pulling away from right-hand drive markets around the world, which represents less that 25 per cent of global car sales.
Yesterday, Holden chiefs said GM could not justify the expense of producing right-hand drive cars for the small Australian and New Zealand market.
Maybe, if Holden and Commodore were killed off in 2017, and sales had not plunged, yesterday’s decision would not have been so cut and dried.
Ford and Toyota have made a far less difficult transition to importing.
Both have retained a larger presence than GM in Australian design and engineering.
Toyota is still the biggest seller in Australia with its Hilux, Corolla and Camry – the latter made at its Altona plant until October 2017.
While Ford is about to drop its Mondeo from the range, it’s had a big win with its Ranger ute and Ford Everest SUV – both designed and engineered here and built in Thailand – and the US-made Mustang, which won its first Bathurst race last year.
READ MORE:
BEING AN ICON WASN’T ENOUGH TO SAVE HOLDEN
A TIMELINE OF HOLDEN IN AUSTRALIA
PM ANGRY OVER HOLDEN DEPARTURE
The bottom line is that Holden, Ford and Toyota long ago were trapped behind the wheel, building cars in Australia that fewer and fewer Australians wanted to buy.
The difference with Holden is that it could not unshackle itself from its past.
Now, 600 Holden workers – three-quarters of its remaining staff – will be out of a job by June.
Worse, the jobs of thousands of people in Holden’s still vast dealer and service network are on the line as the remaining GM product supply runs out at the end of the year.
Jamie Duncan is a journalist who writes on all things Melbourne.
@JDwritesalot