[RedHotMike]

Correct. One of DM's first "executive decisions" (around 2004) was to tell Telstra, and a few other major fleet customers, to literally f/off. Telstra used to buy around 15,000 p.a. Commodore wagons at that time.

GM decided to pursue private sales instead, with their finest Daewoo product.

Surely it's not hard to comprehend that fleet and private/user choosers is not mutually exclusive? Just strip the **** out of the base for the like of Telstra/whoever and make the cream up the food chain of models. Smash out the fleets to cover fixed costs and little more. Everything above that becomes stupid profitable. Buuuuuuuuut what would I know. I only ran manufacturing plants for 20 years in a variety of industries.

 

[jpd80]

Holden's sales dropped because when the US managers came in they decided that fleet sales weren't what they wanted....

Correct. One of DM's first "executive decisions" (around 2004) was to tell Telstra, and a few other major fleet customers, to literally f/off. Telstra used to buy around 15,000 p.a. Commodore wagons at that time.

GM decided to pursue private sales instead, with their finest Daewoo product.

Think about it, major fleet purchases came from the government wanting low price
in return for supporting local manufacturing, one was very conditional on the other.

 

[carisi2k9]

I have just seen the future of Australian manufacturing and aside from the fact it is an SUV it may have to be my next purchase in 5 years or so. A Hydrogen powered vehicle seems interesting but I figure it will probably end up being fully electric since we don't have hydrogen stations in Australia that I know of. It would be nice if it was available in a sedan form.

https://www.afr.com/companies/trans...r-rises-as-sun-sets-on-holden-20200612-p551ya

and

https://www.aumanufacturing.com.au/the-history-and-people-behind-h2x-australia-exclusive

 

[carisi2k9]

Think about it, major fleet purchases came from the government wanting low price
in return for supporting local manufacturing, one was very conditional on the other.

The problem with your theory is that Holden was making huge amounts of money selling the cheaper executive cars to fleets. Between Holden, Ford and Toyota that was 75% of the market. In the early 2000's there was tariffs but no other financial aid aside from that as Holden and Toyota in particular was making a crap load of money. Then the GFC happened and GM pilfered all of Holdens money to keep itself afloat and still went bankrupt. This was when the subsidies started but what should have happened is that the ALP should have bought Holden outright instead of just proping up a bad head company which is what they did. In many ways Tony Abbott saw that GM was a mess and so unfortunately the end result is that the American management made a choice to kill Holden because they were no longer getting a free ride.

 

[jpd80]

Think about it, major fleet purchases came from the government wanting low price
in return for supporting local manufacturing, one was very conditional on the other.

The problem with your theory is that Holden was making huge amounts of money selling the cheaper executive cars to fleets. Between Holden, Ford and Toyota that was 75% of the market.

I'll agree that up until 2004, everything was going splendidly with Holden under Hanenberger's ten year plan
but then, Denny Mooney took over and the wheels just seem to fall off profits and mounting costs for zeta.
Did GM deliberately knobble Holden.........

 

[chinamonty]

Considering they shut Holden off from the Middle East market then i can go along with the idea of deliberately knobbling.