SUNRAYSIA people love their cars.
And they particularly love their Holdens, with a market share more than four times the national average.
So news this week that the company’s owner, General Motors, would “retire” the Holden brand from sales, design and engineering across Australia and New Zealand by 2021 has been met with great sadness.
Holden, despite its American roots, has long been regarded as an iconic Australian automotive brand. As Aussie as football, meat pies and kangaroos.
Generations grew up with the FJ or the Kingswoods, before the Commodore hit the roads. My early memories are of our old yellow Kingswood before the big day when Mum and Dad traded up to a new Commodore.
Holden was loved on roads and race tracks and customers, in many cases entire families, were very loyal to the marque.
But the days of being either a Ford or a Holden person in Australia are long gone.
I was living and working in Geelong when Ford ceased manufacturing vehicles, resulting in the loss of hundreds of local jobs. It was a bitter blow to that city, but one that had been coming for some time.
So when Holden closed its local factory in 2017 the writing was on the wall for the brand’s very survival in Australia.
In 2017, Holden sold roughly 90,000 cars, but once manufacturing ceased, so too did customer loyalty. Last year, Holden sold just 43,000 cars.
It begged the question why would a US-based company continue to invest in switching imported cars to right-hand drive for 3 per cent of 1 per cent of the world’s car market?
We got our answer this week with the final nail in an already empty coffin.
Hundreds of jobs across the country will be lost as a result of this week’s announcement.
The news has naturally hit Mildura’s own Holden dealership hard.
It comes two months before Mildura Holden was set to become part of a new multi-dealership development on Fifteenth Street.
The dealership will still sell Holden vehicles until the end of the year, saying it has “future-proofed” the business with the move to the new site boasting multiple brands.
The company has met staff and offered assurances, but there is no doubt this week’s announcement will present big challenges. They have invested heavily in Mildura, so we wish them well with that transition.
On a positive note, the Mildura Holden Museum vowed this week that it would continue into the future.
And rightly so.
The museum opened when it was announced Holden would no longer be manufactured in Australia.
Since then, car enthusiasts from far and wide have visited the museum.
This week’s announcement will only add to the nostalgia of a brand that has been much loved in Australia. And certainly here in Sunraysia.
As museum manager Kayleen Morello said:
“I would’ve thought that sentimental attachment would still be there and probably a little bit more so now that it’s gone.”
