Finding Closure: The End Of Mitsubishi Manufacturing In Australia Story

[JoeT]

Finding Closure - The End Of Tonsley Park

John Carey
7 May 2008
www.wheelsmag.com.au

The end of manufacturing at Mitsubishi's Tonsley Park plant in South Australia meant the loss of 930 jobs. John Carey uncovers exactly what went wrong, and meets the workers preparing for an uncertain future.

Bec Durbidge isn’t crying now. She’s wiped the tears from her cheeks, but her face still wears sorrow’s signature. The closure of the place at which she’s worked for most of the past 12 years is about to become very, very real. The last car body ever to pass through Tonsley Park’s paint shop will soon arrive. When the Mitsubishi 380 has been sprayed with its coat of platinum silver by Durbidge and the other paint shop workers, that’s it.

The end of a car factory doesn’t happen suddenly, bang, just like that. Instead, closure moves through the place slowly, like a creeping, deadly disease, with activity closing down in exactly the same order that a car is built up.

Already the giant $25 million press, bought specifically to stamp the Mitsubishi 380’s one-piece body side, has ceased its foundation-shaking thump. Yesterday sparks flew from robot welders for the final time, as the last body was built. Over the next 10 days or so, vehicle-assembly group workers will have their turns, as the last 380 made spends seven minutes at each of the production line’s 152 stations. After that, the last car will be given its bill of health by the small crew working in the final check area. Today, though, it’s Bec Durbidge and the paint shop people watching the car on which their jobs depended disappear.

Wearing the paint-shop worker uniform of baggy, blue, anti-static overalls, the 30-year-old is every bit as much a product of the Adelaide factory as any of the 1.5 million-plus cars made here since it was constructed back in the 1960s. Her parents only met because they both worked at the plant, back in the days when Chrysler was the name on the sign beside the gate.

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The End: Last Mitsubishi 380 Rolls Off The Production Line
New Car Manufacturing Plan For Australia On The Way

[JoeT]

I read this story in the latest Wheels magazine last week. What a sad end to a plant that promised so much and it's workers. I still feel guilty for not buying a 380, but after reading about the numbers they would have had to produce to keep the plant running it wouldn't have done much good anyway.

I just hope we don't have this happen again in Australia. Holden and Toyota looks good, but I still fear for Ford, even with the global Huntsman RWD platform in the works.

[mbukukanyau]

I think this is a good opportunity for GM Daewoo to buy an idle plant and build toranas for export and domestic consumption, plus get skilled workers to go with it

[Slick_Holden]

Poor mitsub, Good car no doubt just maybe they should have spent less on trying to over Vegemite sandwich it, And just focus on good motoring, And keep the Magna name which people are familiar with.
Ford and Holden can get away with name changes but mitsub couldn't,. I'm still trying to figure out why it didn't sell, It didn't look bad, And people who drove it liked it enough to say they wouldn't mind owning one?,

Beats me why someone buys a Camry over an Aurion?, And it beats me to why the 380 wasn't considered when buying a Camry as a genuine alternative?.

[Baz]

I doubt Ford or Holden would get away with changing the Holden Commodore or the Ford Falcon name. People would be stabbed

As for sales, poor economy would be one reason, lack of appeal as its in a class with so many other competing vehicles and just got lost in the crowd so to speak

[Slick_Holden]

Holden changed Executive to omega, Plenty moaned but in the end it didn't matter.

Ford now have dropped the Fairmont name which is like holden dropping Calais or Caprice. I think it's going down well. Which is a shock.

But yes if they dropped Falcon Commodore names.. Next boat plane they would need to be on it fast.