Select to expand quoteholy guacamole said..Pugwash said..Thoughts to you Mr Love... did think about you when I wrote that post... I agree it is sad and I hope the crew can find new things to take those skills to...mr love said..
Pugwash..... The Australian design Team have been and are still working on production work for the US market as well as advanced studies and concepts. A very talented and respected team that I have been proud to be a part of for 27 years. For this team to now be disbanded is truly sad and such a waste. The real story here is the job loses and another drain of Australian talent as many will have no option but to relocate. Our Governments talk about the Innovation nation but do F all to support Apex manufacturing where these innovation jobs are.
Sure you were.....just after you indicated that the design and engineering team were designing cars Australians didn't want - as if they were the decision makers...
I am confused by your attempts to tie these threads together... you seem confused about how corporate operate...
Re design and engineering... Commodore is a dead dog... this undoubtedly impacted the perception of the Holden brand as a whole... design, engineering, sales, marketing, whatever the business units were are all wrapped up under the corporate... somewhere in there (the corporate) decision making happens... if the board doesn't have its strategic thinking right or has misread the landscape, then those in the exec/management must communicate this info... the changing buyers habits are well known... well publicised... this is all the stuff the lay people outside of the industry know let alone the strategic thinkers inside an organisation.
And yes, it is sad for the people involved... Ford reckons they are gunna help out... i reckons as a professional person you always need to be evaluating your employment landscape and getting your position and opportunities aligned for what you want to do... training, studying, whatever... as an employee, investing in your own development is essential...
Nah I think I understand the corporate processes here just fine = $$$ - Holden = $$$$$$$$$
Select to expand quoteholy guacamole said..
Nah I think I understand the corporate processes here just fine = $$$ - Holden = $$$$$$$$$
My point proved.
Point 1 
Point 2
Point 3
Problem solved and Mr Love's back in work.
Three out of three. That gets you an extra.
Select to expand quoteholy guacamole said..
Point 1
Point 2
Point 3
Problem solved and Mr Love's back in work.
Three out of three. That gets you an extra.
I preferred just "
"
I quietly predicted something like this thread but it's been more entertaining than I thought it would be...
"i identify as a Holden Commodore "
I think Holden did the right thing. By releasing a 'commodore' that looked more like a Mazda, it did two things.
It tested the market to see if the brand space could support another car that looked like a Mazda instead of trying to sell "a car that no one wants", and it also released the true-blue Holden fans from supporting Commodore, as a real fan would not be seen dead in one. If they had just ditched the last local commodore, there would have been lots of crying, but this last one makes me want to say 'put it out of its misery'. (and I am not really a Holden fan!)
They should have gone the way of Commodore business machines and marketed the commodore SUV, the commodore hatch, the commodore smart car, the commodore volt, the commodore off-roader, the commodore canyonero, and the commodore land yacht. It could have covered all these market segments with one car but different wheels and engines... 
Select to expand quote
I think that article points out the reality of the decision.
What I don't understand is the comments you read about exiting the right hand drive market. Surely a decent engineer could come up with a design that allows a car to be left hand drive or right hand drive with minimal unique parts. Surely!
You can build a firewall with symmetry to cater for the steering wheel on either side. You can design the pedal box to be either side, you can design a dash pod to be placed on either side, leaving, what, a dash crash pad that needs to be unique and maybe selecting different driver seats?
Even the wiring should be easy. I think Holden seemed to have been better than Ford in the past. Their wiring looms often had the spare connectors left there for features that were not used, whereas Ford seemed to have different looms for different specs. Why couldn't they have wiring looms that worked for the controls to be either side?
I think that article is right though. If you change the brand identity to where you are offering cars that are aimed at competing with the Japanese manufacturers, well, the consumer may as well make the leap and go to a Japanese manufactured car. I had a friend that had a Vectra, and despite all the high-tech ideas, and the use of CAN bus to try and simplify the wiring, it had so many faults that he wouldn't buy another one. Japanese complexity without Japanese reliability?
For those that insist that people don't buy cars like commodore anymore, I don't agree. You watch US TV shows and sure there are a large number of Japanese cars, but there are also a large amount of US models. They do like their big engines and their comfort, and cheap fuel probably makes that much easier. I don't understand why our large cars and their large cars couldn't have been the same car, even if it was with different branding?
Select to expand quotenovetti said..
A reissue of the Trabant in Aus would be more exciting then a Comma dore...
You could sell it to people that want to be superior to Prius owners...
That's a Prius? What an outrage. I bet its not even environmentally friendly! Mine is made out of cardboard...
Probably sustainable forest derived cardboard too.
The surprising thing is that Australia had a local manufacturing car plant at all, considering the population, expanse of the continent and the pressures of external markets.
Kudos to those who managed to make it last as long as it did, giving locals a stable work place that they could build suburbs and family's with.
Even more surprising it kept is original family name all the way to the sad end.
Select to expand quoteFormulaNova said..
I think Holden did the right thing. By releasing a 'commodore' that looked more like a Mazda, it did two things.
It tested the market to see if the brand space could support another car that looked like a Mazda instead of trying to sell "a car that no one wants", and it also released the true-blue Holden fans from supporting Commodore, as a real fan would not be seen dead in one. If they had just ditched the last local commodore, there would have been lots of crying, but this last one makes me want to say 'put it out of its misery'. (and I am not really a Holden fan!)
They should have gone the way of Commodore business machines and marketed the commodore SUV, the commodore hatch, the commodore smart car, the commodore volt, the commodore off-roader, the commodore canyonero, and the commodore land yacht. It could have covered all these market segments with one car but different wheels and engines...
I remember Holden being called the Commodore company. This might have been in the late nineties or early naughties when Holden was selling tons of them. Recently I had a ride in a new Commodore, a hire car. It was quite nice inside and seemed pretty good.
I too have never been a fan of Holden, preferring Fords as I felt Ford was a more honorable company than GM. However I always liked driving Commodores over Falcons as I felt better to me in their driving and power. Falcons no matter what vintage always felt to me to be floaty and very boaty with the ride and acceleration. Maybe if I'd tried a more performance oriented Falcon I'd have a different feeling about them.
I kind of wouldn't mind buying a more recent Falcon or Commodore as a car to drive up and down the highway to my farm and back, maybe a 2012 model. Its around a 500km drive up and down a four lane motorway. They'd make it quite a pleasant drive, much more than in our little Japanese hatch, and they wouldn't cost that much to buy or run either. Its just the stupid rego and all that which makes it such a hassle.
Moby I couldn't stand the idea of Ford or Holden so I got me a 2008 Crown more luxurious and reliable than the Euro's and more grunt too with reasonable fuel economy.
Hey FN, I reckon it could be engineered quite easily, but we would probably find that the margin (profit on sale) is so low on their new cars that it would become uncompetitive economically to convert cars to RHD as opposed to cars that are RHD straight off the production line. I believe that GM are still going to offer the Corvette as RHD because they will produce them as RHD on a parallel line and they will not require conversion post assembly line. I think their policy is that they cannot afford to have duplicated assembly lines for RHD and LHD so they abandoned RHD and chose to service their own domestic market and any other LHD drive country because it is more economically efficient for them. I can only assume that manufacturers such as VW Group can produce both LHD and RHD because they are more economically efficient at production than GM and so have bigger margins to play with.
Select to expand quotePaddles B'mere said..
Hey FN, I reckon it could be engineered quite easily, but we would probably find that the margin (profit on sale) is so low on their new cars that it would become uncompetitive economically to convert cars to RHD as opposed to cars that are RHD straight off the production line. I believe that GM are still going to offer the Corvette as RHD because they will produce them as RHD on a parallel line and they will not require conversion post assembly line. I think their policy is that they cannot afford to have duplicated assembly lines for RHD and LHD so they abandoned RHD and chose to service their own domestic market and any other LHD drive country because it is more economically efficient for them. I can only assume that manufacturers such as VW Group can produce both LHD and RHD because they are more economically efficient at production than GM and so have bigger margins to play with.
Yeah, I was thinking about this earlier as I was driving my Nissan Elgrand and thought 'hang on, the Japanese have been building RHD and LHD of the same models for ages'. To be fair they have the volume now where they can have enough for each side, but they have demonstrated that its not a big thing.
I just don't get it though. Its not that different. Even the bits and pieces that you find in most cars in different markets share quite a few common parts or part designs. I strongly suspect that in a lot of cases Holden has gone to a local manufacturer here and said 'we have this widget here from head office, what would it cost to tool up and make us 100,000 of them?' The parts are the same, just made in different countries.
I think Holden Engine Company was making certain engines for different markets around the world.
I think it would be better in some ways to have the car stamped out in the US and shipped here for assembly as a RHD model, which sounds like it was the way things were done here many years ago anyway.
I still think it would be easy to design it so that even if you have to disassemble a completed car and convert it, it wouldn't be too hard... but I could be wrong and its a moot point anyway.
I was a bit surprised in the past when Ford Australia were proudly saying that they spent X number of $M on designing the "all new Falcon" when it just looked like a ripoff of a US or Euro model. No doubt that a lot of cost gets eaten up in small changes, but I do wonder whether it is bad design or just what it costs.
Select to expand quoteTonyAbbott said..
It's all the unions fault
You Lieberals wrecked a car industry , wrecked a CO2 reduction scheme , now wrecking an economy, all this in less than a decade , what actually have you achieved other than housing bubbles ...and tax cuts ... 
Select to expand quoteTonyAbbott said..
It's all the unions fault
Not TA... Troll...
Select to expand quotebazz61 said..TonyAbbott said..
It's all the unions fault
You Lieberals wrecked a car industry , wrecked a CO2 reduction scheme , now wrecking an economy, all this in less than a decade , what actually have you achieved other than housing bubbles ...and tax cuts ...
I believe the 'Lieberals' successfully stopped Bill Shorten becoming Prime Minister.
Select to expand quoteslammin said..
Moby I couldn't stand the idea of Ford or Holden so I got me a 2008 Crown more luxurious and reliable than the Euro's and more grunt too with reasonable fuel economy.
If only they still did wagons , eh?
Select to expand quotebazz61 said..TonyAbbott said..
It's all the unions fault
You Lieberals wrecked a car industry , wrecked a CO2 reduction scheme , now wrecking an economy, all this in less than a decade , what actually have you achieved other than housing bubbles ...and tax cuts ...
The unions milked too much from the car manufacturers. Became too costly to make cars here. Liberals just stopped wasting tax payers money.
The greens wrecked the carbon tax
The economy is ok, could be better if the cost of government was not so large.
Select to expand quotePugwash said...
I believe the 'Lieberals' successfully stopped Bill Shorten becoming Prime Minister.
You're welcome
What amazes me is the number of models, sub-models, production co-ops, etc that happen in Japan. They have the ultimate business model. Buy the best robotics, then tooling up is comparatively inexpensive to create interesting, niche vehicles to test the market, then strengthen the popular designs.
Well TonyAbbott, in true "what came first, the chicken or the egg" spirit ........................ if you want cheap labour you need to provide cheap housing ............................. How's that been going for you guys? Any progress yet?
Select to expand quotePaddles B'mere said..
Well TonyAbbott, in true "what came first, the chicken or the egg" spirit ........................ if you want cheap labour you need to provide cheap housing ............................. How's that been going for you guys? Any progress yet?
Yep, I think you and I are the only one's that can see this sometimes. How do you live on low wages when your rent or mortgage is so high?
I still shudder that some genius politician had the bright idea that Redfern in Sydney should be an Aussie version of silicon valley when it is one of the more expensive places to live near.... crazy! Armidale would be a much better choice even.
Select to expand quoteTonyAbbott said..Pugwash said...
I believe the 'Lieberals' successfully stopped Bill Shorten becoming Prime Minister.
You're welcome
Well, you are both wrong when its quite clear it was a mr b shorten that had the most hand in it.
Select to expand quoteFormulaNova said..TonyAbbott said..Pugwash said...
I believe the 'Lieberals' successfully stopped Bill Shorten becoming Prime Minister.
You're welcome
Well, you are both wrong when its quite clear it was a mr b shorten that had the most hand in it.
Ha ha... yeah... or something in it...
