The 80 percent fleet sales thing is misleading: in Australia many people are able to salary-sacrifice i.e. convert the salary taxed at higher rates of personal income into a private lease in pre-tax $$$. Similar in some respects to Smartbuy. So while your Avis, Herz etc are big buyers of Commodores and Falcons, they represent only a few percent of sales. Same with large businesses - Telcos and office machine companies. Aussie RWD cars stand up to high mileages very well and are comfortable with large capacity and what kills things like Camrys and Magnas for longterm running costs is front tyre wear and servicing FWDs is dearer, as are parts usually.
Cars like the SV6 Commodore
and XR6 Falcon
are cars packaged and aimed at fleet buyers, who want a bit of sportiness - they are not boring beige rentacars, but have alloys with sticky rubber, sports suspension, better interiors and gauges and nicer body kits. Often the company you worked for could offset the Goods and Services Tax associated with the car and it's costs against the GST it owed the government from conducting it's business, which was win-win for everyone and made the lease deal unbeatable vs. buying a car with finance. Plus you just turned over your car every two years for a new one without shelling out reams of money. All your petrol, insurance, running costs were bulkbuy fleet, too.
A whole leasing industry has sprung up around brokering lease deals for the total car cost and subcontracting to companies so they just deduct money from salaries direct.
RRP on these cars is north of $US25,000 which puts them out of reach of the first time carbuyer who tends to choose cheaper stuff - or buy s/h ex-fleet. They are popluar as they look very similar and come in the same 'hero' colours as the '8's. There are so many of them being auctioned at 2 y.o. and 20,000miles up it has flooded the market, forced prices down and turned it into a buyers market. That means the fleetdeals for these cars have got pricier due to the lower resale for the leasing cos. Two years ago when the VZ SV6 was released you could lease one for about $13000 p.a. from my then employer - now the same car is $16,000 for a full lease.
Holden has two weapons in it's arsenal to combat this:
1. It sells about 30,000 of the old cars a year to the M-E. With the new, hyper-stylish Caprice and larger better-equipped Commodore that number could balloon - and the Arab world, with long flat roads and hot conditions love Commodores and Caprices which are engineered for the same stuff.
2. These cars have been designed and built to be sold anywhere on the planet without modification. They are Euro III compliant and unlike the Monaro and Caprice which Opel had expressed interest in are homologated for European registration.
I believe Vauxhall is itching to get their hands on HSV VEs in bigger numbers than Monaros which wil have more than 400hp along with six-speed tiptronic trans, and there is a strong possibility the WM will also be badged as a high-end Opel, where it will be very competitive with limo Benzes and Mercs, because it is much bigger, roomier and yet should slaughter them for running costs. DoD had been confirmed for VE, too.
So while Holden sales in Oz may not ever be like VT sales unless petrol prices recover swiftly, Holdens are likely to be sold increasingly o/s.