General Motors has made it clear that they want the Holden name shuttered by 2021. They have even seemed to have gone out of their way to eliminate the name out of existence. While there’s a lot of finger-pointing at the exact reasoning behind everything, it’s clear that once local manufacturing ended in 2017, the Australian market responded to the offerings by GM with absolute disgust and as a result, Holden would experience a “dignified and respectful wind-down”. But, like just about everything else that’s gone on with anything automotive related in Australia over the last five years, that’s leaving a sour taste in mouths too. And one Australian politician is offering to do something about it. Queensland senator James McGrath, in a speech addressing the federal parliament, went after GM with fangs bared.
Per part of the speech: “To put it bluntly, General Motors is trying to sneak under the cover of COVID-19 and to disappear into the night and leave Australian businesses stranded after an 89-year one-night stand.” Sharp, ain’t it? Currently, there’s deliberations between the former Holden dealers, what’s left of GM-Holden, and General Motors as a whole, and what that boils down to is a belief that GM was planning to shutter Holden since 2015. Dealers also believe that the compensation packages offered by GM is completely inadequate, while GM claims that they might not owe a quarter of the original deal of $1,500 for every new car sold over a certain period and extra costs for showroom upgrades. Holden dealers have had independent analysis done and claim that they are owed $6,100 per car for the same period.
Now, back to Senator McGrath for the second part of his speech. Quoted: “General Motors may think the rich history of the Holden brand is worthless, but I think it’s priceless. If General Motors thinks the brand is worth nothing, then hand the brand back to Australia. Give it back to the Holden dealers. Indeed, I’m happy to purchase the Holden brand off General Motors for a dollar. I will send you, Ms. Barra, a dollar in the post and you can give us the Holden brand back and we will give it to the Holden dealers.”
The question now: will GM and the remains of the Holden dealership network come to any kind of agreement? It appears that there is still plenty of simmering anger over the shutdown and any perceived screwing over by GM isn’t going to help matters any, especially when GM still wants to import cars for sale like the C8 Corvette.
Welcome to the world of Government Motors.
Australia should impose a 100% duty on every car that GM tries to export into their country..
I love my country, but I stand with the Aussie brothers on this. F@%# GM and their corporate mentality. They screwed us over on Oldsmobile, then Pontiac, now Holden.
Lets look at this rationally shall we, how is GM shutting down Holden any different to them shutting down Saturn, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Hummer and Saab? All of which had lower operating and developement costs and larger sales volumes than Holden. The fact is GM has needed to shut down or sell off Holden since the GFC, indeed GM has needed to rationalize it’s brands since before the GFC. You don’t have to look to hard to see all the great businesses that GM once had and has since sold off, usually when it’s profits are going down.
The only reason why Holden lasted as long as it did is simply due to several key players going with emotion rather than business sense, the fact is Holden’s biggest selling vehicle, the RWD Commodore, was in a segment that was fast dissappearing and every other vehicle Holden had was either subpar, or also in a shrinking segment. It’s offerings in the biggest selling segments, pickups and SUVs, were either average or below average.
Some people have argued that GM should have sold Holden to PSA like they did with Opel/Vauxhall, but why would PSA want Holden? What would they do with it? The Holden badged Opel models all had production suspended because they weren’t selling, how would a change of ownership improve sales of a slow selling product? Which ever way you cut it, Holden was always going to die. It’s sad but it’s also the simple fact.