It’s farewell to Holden, after the longest kiss goodnight
When I was growing up in rural Canterbury 40 years ago, farmers drove one of three cars.
Ford, Chrysler or Holden. Every family had a Ford Falcon, a Holden Kingswood or a Valiant Regal sitting in the garage. And the argument as to which was best never went out of fashion, particularly after a few Ward Ales.
Then Mitsubishi took over Chrysler, with the last Valiant Safaris rolling off the plant at Todd Park in 1981. So it became a two-horse race. The Blue Oval versus the Silver Lion.
My family were Holden people and I grew up with a series of straight six Holden utes, starting with an HT and finishing with the HX with its ‘‘bleeding edge’’ radial tuned suspension.
Since then I’ve pedalled a few on the racetrack and even managed to win the ‘‘drivers’’ category of the Energywise Rally of New Zealand in a much-babied 6.2 litre HSV Maloo (much to the chagrin of the organisers).
So it was with some sorrow I heard this week that GM was finally shutting Holden down.
Holden started out in 1860 as a saddlery maker in South Australia who went on to supply cars, first by Ford and then by GM, in the early 20th century. They got acquired by GM in 1930 and went on to become a lovemark across Australasia.
This decision to end Holden wasn’t a surprising one. This longest kiss goodnight was first flagged way back in 2015 when General Motors gave warning that the iconic Holden Commodore was going to cease production in Australia with the Adelaide plant closing in 2017.
While not all Holdens are Commodores, they are the flagbearers.
Since 2018, the Commodores have been built in France by Groupe PSA – and have arguably been the better for it. Not that the Aussies cared as to most of them the idea of a ‘‘Peugeot-Holden’’ was sacrilegious and traditional buyers stayed away in droves.
Then, late last year, GM decided to stop selling the Buick Regal in North America (which, like the Commodore, is based on the French-assembled Insignia).
This meant the unit price for Commodores increased, but made the ongoing production of a low number of right-hand drive Insignias even harder to justify.
Soon after this GM confirmed that they saw their future as being a combination of just four vehicle platforms and the Insignia wasn’t one of them. They’ve also said they see their future as increasingly electric.
And while the Australian prime minister blasted Holden for the decision for allowing the brand to die and giving the government no warning it’s not going to change anything or save the 600 jobs that go with the planned closure over the course of 2020.
So what can we learn from this?
The first is that complexity is a killer. Operating an Australasian brand and a family of brandspecific models in a market of just 25 million people doesn’t make sense when you’re trying to sustain a global empire in a predominantly left-hand drive world.
GM tried to make this work ever since the global financial crisis, but finally made the right decision last year with the call to rationalise to just four platforms.
The second is that poor quality control can deter the most loyal brand stalwarts. An NRMA/ Choice survey found Holden the least reliable brand in Australia from 2011 to 2016, with 68 per cent of new car owners reporting problems.
At the same time Toyota and Mazda were kicking butt and taking names when it came to quality control, and the Korean manufacturers moved mountains.
A mechanic’s poem tells the story: ‘‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if it wasn’t for Holden our tools would rust.’’
The third is that government subsidies are a waste of time. The Australian government ended up throwing A$2 billion (NZ$2.09b) directly at General Motors to subsidise local production.
If we average that across the 14 million taxpayers there, that’s an astounding A$142 each. In hindsight an extraordinary waste of their money.
The fourth learning is that you ignore the environment and sustainability at your peril. About the time fuel prices hiked in the early 2000s there used to be joke. Question – how do you double the value of your Holden? Answer – fill it up with petrol.
And while models like the Barina and Spark have been a much better reflection of where today’s buyers are heading, they couldn’t match the pricing of offerings from Suzuki or Nissan.
GM actually led the world in electric vehicle technology in the late 90s with their futuristic EV1, which was leased rather than sold. But the lead was short-lived – just 1100 were made and the last one was officially retired in 2003.
Mention EV today and the likes of Nissan, VW and Hyundai are the first to come to mind, and Holden is seemingly irrelevant.
And maybe that’s what really killed Holden. They stopped being relevant. The wheel was turning but the hamster was dead.
Poor quality control can deter the most loyal brand stalwarts.