GM Inside News Forum banner

Angry Australian Senator Offers GM $1 for Holden Brand

6K views 103 replies 13 participants last post by  jpd80 
#1 ·
GM’s decision to pull out of the Australian market and its compensation for Australian dealers are being criticized. In fact, James McGrath, Senator for Queensland has offered GM one dollar in exchange for the brand to express his dissatisfaction with the situation. “If General Motors think the brand is worth nothing, then hand the brand back […]
The post Angry Australian Senator Offers GM $1 for Holden Brand appeared first on GM Inside News.


More...
 
#5 ·
The other side of this was that Ford and GM allowed their local Australian branches to keep local
production for way longer than it would anywhere else because of government funding but after
that was withdrawn, only one of the two was able to survive on imported products.
 
#15 ·
OK, let it be known that I'm upping the offer to a buck fitty.
 
  • Like
Reactions: gkr778 and BlackGTP
#19 ·
Thanks for your bid Neanderthal, let the auction begin!

To put Senator the Honorable James McGrath's and Neanderthal's offers into perspective, GM in the U.S. offered a "Holden Logo Exterior Kit" on the 2017 Chevrolet SS that went for a cool $250 (USD) :D

 
#28 · (Edited)
The majority of Ford vehicles sold in Australia are north of $50K and I’d expect that the top four brands sell heaps more product than Ford that’s north of $40k.

Most Asian and European brands are RHD inclusive so it’s no big deal to add products to Australia as we kinda align with UK and Asian RHD vehicles anyway.
 
#43 · (Edited)
Zeta's product envelope was more than just cars, it had design reserve up to a 120" utilities like Traverse/Explorer
so there was an opportunity to develop an SUV or two for our market as well as for others like America.
Unfortunately, the moment you restrict the platform to cars, it just so easy to tie it up in a bow and say that
Aussie car buyers didn't support the vehicles offered by Holden. Not once did GM venture beyond a sports wagon.

In less than a generation, Holden and GM went from can do local solution to lazy, half baked corporate responses,
both in product and attitudes towards buyers who were prepared to pay a lot of money for vehicles that were different
to GM's global offerings.

The fact that GM was incapable of making Opel Vauxhall work in Europe adds credence to the sense of GM's
global incompetence, twenty years and it still could not connect with European or global buyers until finally
surrendering to the weight of losses. Any business that treats customers like that cannot survive in those markets.
 
#50 · (Edited)
It does cost more to through engineer a vehicle in both RHD and LHD but if both are done at the same time, far less than if the vehicle is done with no path preservation. Even with Commodore, the LHD development was done as part of the LHD vehicle project costs.
The Mustang RHD still has some glaring oversights with equipment changeover to RHD, hood release, hand brake and console oddities but none were dealbreakers. The most notable was crappy right side headers to clear RHD steering shaft.
 
#51 ·
It does cost more to through engineer a vehicle in both RHD and LHD but if are both done at the same time, far less than if the vehicle is done with no path preservation.
The Mustang RHD still has some glaring oversights with equipment changeover to RHD, hood release, hand brake and console oddities but none were dealbreakers. The most notable was crappy right side headers to clear RHD steering shaft.
My point is that if engineering is done at the design stage for RHD it doesnt cost anymore to build one or the other

The design is baked into the car and the only requirement is to make x amount of parts for a run of RHD down a line the same as there would be different wiring looms for higher end models on any car for example

Or if a car has a Sedan or Hatch config or 2 door or 4 door

It's the exact same principle
 
#84 ·
PSA bought GM for dirt cheap with less legacy costs than GM had. GM wrote off those legacy costs a few years back and no longer has that burden on their bottom line.

Opel is the one that sent the US the wonderful Chevette, so it's not like all their products are great. You praise Opel when they have a good product and blame GM when Opel has a turkey. We get it, you hate America except for the tourist dollars they bring and then talk bad about them when they leave.
 
#93 ·
PSA bought GM for dirt cheap with less legacy costs than GM had. GM wrote off those legacy costs a few years back and no longer has that burden on their bottom line.

Opel is the one that sent the US the wonderful Chevette, so it's not like all their products are great. You praise Opel when they have a good product and blame GM when Opel has a turkey. We get it, you hate America except for the tourist dollars they bring and then talk bad about them when they leave.

Why do you guys always fall back on that when the truth is spoken ?

Opel/Vauxhall now makes a profit , didn't when under control of GM . That's the truth
 
#102 ·
From what I've seen over the past couple of years, GM cleaned house big time,
so when it comes out of deep freeze, it will probably have one or two bad quarters
but, since it no longer has Opel Vauxhall, there will be no blood bath from Europe.

GM's current cash position is pretty good, having $30 billion and then drawing down
another $16 billion on top of that, they're in a very strong position with more refreshes
coming later this year.........I predict sell, sell, sell all the way to Christmas.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top