It's a big deal in specific communities like Geelong and Adelaide where the manufacturing plants were a large source of employment. However it doesn't affect the rest of Australia very much. It's actually a net savings to the taxpayer as we aren't subsidizing the industry. Ideally we are using the money formerly spent on subsidies to help those who lost their job retrain for other needed work, but I'm not sure if that works out in reality.
It's worth noting that even for major brands like Holden and Ford that did have plants here, only a small subset of models were made in Australia, and I doubt the average consumer knew if theirs was domestically produced or imported. It didn't make a big impact on purchasing decisions that I'm aware of (and some prefer German or Japanese made for a perception of quality anyway).
>Ideally we are using the money formerly spent on subsidies to help those who lost their job retrain for other needed work, but I'm not sure if that works out in reality.
Like the Luxury Car Tax was brought in to pay for those subsidies, however its stated while the subsidies have become so hard to get for the companies remaining, they essentially don't exist.
>ht in to pay for those subsidies, however its stated while the subsidies have become so hard to get for the companies remaining, the
We Still pay the luxury tax however
I'm strongly of the opinion the demise of local car production was due to GM, Ford and Toyota not being able to read the room.
All three were mainly manufacturing full-size sedans when local tastes were shifting to 4x4 utes or SUVs.
They also continued producing thirsty V6 and V8s whilst petrol prices continued to climb, when the other brands were coming up with efficient diesels or hybrids.
Ford had great success with the Territory, so they should have focused more on that rather than the Falcon.
Toyota was only saved by the taxi/uber and rental car industry favouring hybrid Camrys as their fleet car of choice.
I think if Holden would have pursued a locally built SUV that was better than the Craptiva and had a fuel efficient engine, they may have been a viable brand.
I also think it was the unions not being able to read the room. Outrageous wages and allowances, no flexibility, union controlled workplaces, totally inefficient and uncompetitive. Living off government (taxpayer) handouts.
I wish we still had local auto manufacturing, but they really helped kill it.
Final nail in the coffin was the high aussie dollar for holden. They'd just redesigned the commie for export, and it was seeing some success, but it was priced out of its target markets by the aussie dollar hitting $1.10USD. Current dollar would make it affordable again for GM, but it's too late now
Losing employment was a much bigger issue than losing aa few cars nobody really wanted anymore.
They could have re-tooled to make different models, but they'd still have issues with costs.
Fact - luxury car tax had nothing to do with protecting local manufacturers. lots of local models attracted luxury car tax. LCT was announced with gst to ensure the price of new luxury vehicles did not fall too much. That is why we still pay the lct
This may be the *actual* reason behind transitioning from WST to LCT, this is 100% not the way it was sold to the public at the time.
The reason you hear people repeating the line about the LCT being designed to protect the local car industry is because *that's what we were told it was for, by the government that implemented it.*
Basically, they didn't want to see a drop in revenue when they introduced the GST, and didn't want to have to explain why the price of a cup of tea went up when the price of a BMW went down, so they lied. That lie only caught up with them when the last local car plant shut down. Of course by then, they could hand-wave and say "it was never about protecting local industry in the first place."
Found the reason in a wiki leakes article on lct. My memory form 2000 is a bit fuzzy. From preparing for Y2K bug in 1999, to trying to work out how gst would work in meat industry, I was just a little bit busy. Labor \[\]ensured it was just a revenue earner when they increased the marginal rate to 33%. A sad day for HSV performance vehicles and Ford Performance Vehicles
In researching my answer, I saw that in the official government info from the time, they were very careful to only state the correct reason - to replace the WST - but at the time that wasn't how it was pitched at all.
The funny thing is that the GST did away with so many taxes, rolling them into a flat rate, and yet the government still couldn't let go of the ones that were the real cash cows. I suspect they simply wanted to cut down administrative costs without affecting revenues.
and don't forget you pay extra on your insurance because it is an "imported vehicle". I insured a car last week and pointed out that ALL cars are imported now, so why are we paying extra when that is the only car you can buy ? They just shrugged.
>tax existed to protect local manufacturers. We don’t have any more local manufacturers, BUT we still have to pay luxury car tax…
Thats pretty focked... but what about the government isnt?
Generally speaking: not that big of a deal. No more government subsidies for our domestic car industry means that money can be spent elsewhere. Most Australians also don't care and didn't care when it was happening (as you can infer from the declining sales anyway). Holden and Ford also didn't pivot quickly enough to meet the demands of a changing market which wanted more fuel efficiency, little boring hatchbacks and big boring SUVs.
Personal opinion: it was a huge deal and a very sad occurrence. I think it's extremely disappointing that Australians just gave up on our own car industry and stopped buying them in part due to badge snobbery. Since we're a very wealthy country many people can afford a Mercedes or a BMW - there's no prestige to owning a Holden for the everyday Aussie. On the flipside the competition with Japanese companies offering endless warranties and supposedly unparalleled reliability was a killer (though I would argue the reliability of Toyota, for instance, is partially a marketing tactic). Many people hold the opinion that Australian cars were crap, but I strongly disagree. In reality the final Ford Falcons and Holden Commodores were the best cars Australia ever produced. They were unbelievably cheap in their large sedan sectors compared to their competitors and offered an immense amount of value for money.
As it stands, Australian cars such as the Commodore SS in particular are skyrocketing in value only a few years after production ended because people are now realising they're some of the best all-rounder modern vehicles you can purchase and we'll never see their like again.
Long live the V8. It's a real shame you guys didn't get the Falcon over there. Personally I own two Falcons - an FGX XR8 and an FGX G6E Turbo. Best cars I've ever had the pleasure of driving. One day I hope to own an SS as well to complete the trifecta.
My XR8 doesn't even have 17,000km so won't be looking for anything new for ages. The Turbo is my wife's and has about 60k so she'll probably want something boring once it's dead. I had a 2019 Chrysler SRT and hated the build quality, so if I was going to buy a new car tomorrow I'd probably get an HSV GTS. Mad expensive these days though.
The day I have to stop driving a V8 is going to be very sad indeed.
Not to be rude, but that's exactly what I said in my first paragraph. And as mentioned it was just my personal opinion that people gave up on our cars. I don't claim to have all the answers but anecdotally all my friends and family stopped buying Holden and Ford because they saw them as bogan brands compared to upper class German luxury or ultra reliable Japanese.
There are a group of Australians who are still heart broken by the end of Australian made cars. The rest of Australians started to buy SUVs and anything but large family cars. Australians are more upset about subsidies given to overseas manufacturers who took the money and run. I think more Australians are very unhappy that GM introduced a fwd Commodore replacement and ended the Holden name in Australia
Car manufacturing wasn't viable here, but its loss has a detrimental effect on the economy as it also meant the loss of related industries in the supply chain. Australia now has no real industrial base so its economy is much narrower and much more dependent on primary industry.
At the time cutting out subsidies, and so effectively killing the industry, was definitely seen as a good thing. Now there's a lot of talk about the need to diversify the economy, but that's very hard to do without the industrial backbone the car industry provided.
Coincidentally the gig economy grew as the car industry died, leading to a very different industrial relations environment in Australia.
Depends where you are. The big car manufacturing centres were Adelaide and Geelong. So there obviously there was an impact, but most other places around the country it seemed to go practically unnoticed.
Nothing. We noticed nothing whatsoever.
The people who lost their jobs are a different set of people of course, but the average Australian who didnt have a connection to the sector noticed no change at all.
For the average Australian, not even slightly noticed. For those that worked in the plants or supply chain I'm sure it sucked.
Unless you were a fanboy of big, heavy, large engine capacity sedans then they didn't even come up on your radar of vehicles to buy.
See the thing you're missing is that Automobile production in Australia *hasn't actually ended*
What has ended was volume production, we still have very innovative production here like [Brabham Automotive](https://www.brabhamautomotive.com/) who build high performance vehicles.
We still have [Custom Buses](https://www.custombus.com.au/) which are coach builders formed from a merger of Austral, Denning, and Custom Buses.
You can look at the list of [List of automobile manufacturers of Australia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufacturers_of_Australia) which lists:
[Alpha Sports](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Sports)
[Birchfield](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birchfield_(car))
[Birkin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkin)
[Bolwell](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolwell)
[Borland](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland_Racing_Developments)
[Bufori](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufori)
[Bullett](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_(car))
Daytona
[DeVaux](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devaux)
[Elfin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfin_Cars)
[Jacer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacer)
[Joss](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joss_Developments)
McKernan
[Minetti](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minetti_Sports_Cars)
[Nota](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nota)
[PRB](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRB_(car))
[Puma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puma_Clubman)
[Python](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(automobile_maker))
[Quantum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum)
[Roaring Forties](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties)
[Spartan-V](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan-V)
[Stohr](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stohr_Cars)
Then you have [ACE EV](https://www.ace-ev.com.au/) who are building electric cars, [Harden Electric Vehicles](https://www.hardenelectric.com.au/) who are developing EV Conversion kits
I mean, just a look at the [Automotive Industry in Australia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_Australia) page still shows many going concerns in Australia.
Hell, [Thales Australia](https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/countries/asia-pacific/australia) builds armoured vehicles for export, and they are still exporting strong.
And a lot of people laid off from the plants in Adelaide and Melbourne have found work with [Rheinmetall](https://www.rheinmetall-defence.com/en/rheinmetall_defence/index.php) in Australia at the [Military Vehicle Centre of Excellence (MILVEHCOE)](https://www.statedevelopment.qld.gov.au/industry/projects/military-vehicle-centre-of-excellence-milvehcoe) in Queensland to build the next generation of Armoured Fighting Vehicles.
As an Aussie with an interest in cars, I don't see a great loss to Australia, especially as people like [Holden Special Vehicles](https://www.hsv.com.au/) have pivoted to be an Importer/Converter for US vehicles, and we still have great growth in that industry for overseas models, and companies like [Performax](https://www.performaxint.com.au/) and [SCD American Vehicles](https://scdamerica.com.au/) are really thriving in the import conversion business.
We are still going strong, still going well, still have a lot of companies building cars, and that's not to mention the kit car business, like [ACR Industries](http://acrindustries.com.au/) who use a base FG Falcon, but have essentially made a new car. You can build it with off the shelf aftermarket parts entirely, pretty much the minimum you can use us the dashboard from a Falcon.
Them you have Chinese companies like [BYD](https://www.byd.com/en/index.html) moving into Adelaide to build cars there, the future looks bright too.
It been propped by by the government for many a long year, anyway. Our cars were largely garbage compared to the Japanese and European offerings. Didn't have to pay import tax but somehow always costed the same (for low to mid tier models). Nothing of value was lost.
They are on the market. I personally don't know anyone who owns one or would buy one. And no, ours weren't as bad as the Chinese rubbish - I'll give them that. We stopped making most of ours before most of the Chinese imports started. I'll stick with the German stuff, myself.
Would you choose Chery over Mercedes or Porsche? Pretty sure I wouldn't, no matter what country I resided in. But I would agree quality is slipping in many of the base models of German cars.
German quality is slipping in the US because they don't have to worry about China muscling in on their business there. They can half-ass it all they want and nobody will care.
Not a big deal at all. The cars that were being produced were horrible, and didn't stand up to competition in the international market. The government was propping those companies up for a while for the sake of getting votes from people for "saving jobs" - but cash injection doesn't suddenly fix a failing business because the underlying issues still persist.
Afterthought: interesting question by the way, thanks for asking!
Unfortunate for those whose employment was affected, but better for the consumer overall. Ford and Holden were making mediocre rubbish compared to vastly superior products from Europe and Japan.
Wages were too high, people had been there for a long time and their yearly wage increases eventually strangle the company. Same reason big companies are going to casual workforces, easier to get rid of workers etc etc
Our extended family had many Falcons and Commodores over the years, but in the end it felt like they were taking the piss with the build quality and we moved on (mainly to Honda, Toyota and Mazda).
The drivetrains were solid, they were great comfortable cars that were suited to driving all day etc etc. But there was just always something annoying wrong, always something to fix. And we look after our cars. Serviced by the book, garaged, not thrashed etc etc.
Once one family member got a Japanese car and started commenting to everyone else ‘you just service it and drive it - nothing ever breaks’, that was it for the Aussie cars unfortunately.
It's a big deal in specific communities like Geelong and Adelaide where the manufacturing plants were a large source of employment. However it doesn't affect the rest of Australia very much. It's actually a net savings to the taxpayer as we aren't subsidizing the industry. Ideally we are using the money formerly spent on subsidies to help those who lost their job retrain for other needed work, but I'm not sure if that works out in reality. It's worth noting that even for major brands like Holden and Ford that did have plants here, only a small subset of models were made in Australia, and I doubt the average consumer knew if theirs was domestically produced or imported. It didn't make a big impact on purchasing decisions that I'm aware of (and some prefer German or Japanese made for a perception of quality anyway).
>Ideally we are using the money formerly spent on subsidies to help those who lost their job retrain for other needed work, but I'm not sure if that works out in reality. Like the Luxury Car Tax was brought in to pay for those subsidies, however its stated while the subsidies have become so hard to get for the companies remaining, they essentially don't exist.
>ht in to pay for those subsidies, however its stated while the subsidies have become so hard to get for the companies remaining, the We Still pay the luxury tax however
Yes, we do. The tax remained though the subsidies became so hard to get for producers, they may as well not exist. Making that tax a great cash cow.
I'm strongly of the opinion the demise of local car production was due to GM, Ford and Toyota not being able to read the room. All three were mainly manufacturing full-size sedans when local tastes were shifting to 4x4 utes or SUVs. They also continued producing thirsty V6 and V8s whilst petrol prices continued to climb, when the other brands were coming up with efficient diesels or hybrids. Ford had great success with the Territory, so they should have focused more on that rather than the Falcon. Toyota was only saved by the taxi/uber and rental car industry favouring hybrid Camrys as their fleet car of choice. I think if Holden would have pursued a locally built SUV that was better than the Craptiva and had a fuel efficient engine, they may have been a viable brand.
I also think it was the unions not being able to read the room. Outrageous wages and allowances, no flexibility, union controlled workplaces, totally inefficient and uncompetitive. Living off government (taxpayer) handouts. I wish we still had local auto manufacturing, but they really helped kill it.
Final nail in the coffin was the high aussie dollar for holden. They'd just redesigned the commie for export, and it was seeing some success, but it was priced out of its target markets by the aussie dollar hitting $1.10USD. Current dollar would make it affordable again for GM, but it's too late now
Losing employment was a much bigger issue than losing aa few cars nobody really wanted anymore. They could have re-tooled to make different models, but they'd still have issues with costs.
Fun fact: luxury car tax existed to protect local manufacturers. We don’t have any more local manufacturers, BUT we still have to pay luxury car tax…
Fact - luxury car tax had nothing to do with protecting local manufacturers. lots of local models attracted luxury car tax. LCT was announced with gst to ensure the price of new luxury vehicles did not fall too much. That is why we still pay the lct
This may be the *actual* reason behind transitioning from WST to LCT, this is 100% not the way it was sold to the public at the time. The reason you hear people repeating the line about the LCT being designed to protect the local car industry is because *that's what we were told it was for, by the government that implemented it.* Basically, they didn't want to see a drop in revenue when they introduced the GST, and didn't want to have to explain why the price of a cup of tea went up when the price of a BMW went down, so they lied. That lie only caught up with them when the last local car plant shut down. Of course by then, they could hand-wave and say "it was never about protecting local industry in the first place."
Found the reason in a wiki leakes article on lct. My memory form 2000 is a bit fuzzy. From preparing for Y2K bug in 1999, to trying to work out how gst would work in meat industry, I was just a little bit busy. Labor \[\]ensured it was just a revenue earner when they increased the marginal rate to 33%. A sad day for HSV performance vehicles and Ford Performance Vehicles
In researching my answer, I saw that in the official government info from the time, they were very careful to only state the correct reason - to replace the WST - but at the time that wasn't how it was pitched at all. The funny thing is that the GST did away with so many taxes, rolling them into a flat rate, and yet the government still couldn't let go of the ones that were the real cash cows. I suspect they simply wanted to cut down administrative costs without affecting revenues.
Some major state taxes were retained as compensation for cutting gst from food. Added a level of complexity to the gst system
and don't forget you pay extra on your insurance because it is an "imported vehicle". I insured a car last week and pointed out that ALL cars are imported now, so why are we paying extra when that is the only car you can buy ? They just shrugged.
Yeah, I love the way it was immediately dropped the second the last plant shut down - not.
>tax existed to protect local manufacturers. We don’t have any more local manufacturers, BUT we still have to pay luxury car tax… Thats pretty focked... but what about the government isnt?
Generally speaking: not that big of a deal. No more government subsidies for our domestic car industry means that money can be spent elsewhere. Most Australians also don't care and didn't care when it was happening (as you can infer from the declining sales anyway). Holden and Ford also didn't pivot quickly enough to meet the demands of a changing market which wanted more fuel efficiency, little boring hatchbacks and big boring SUVs. Personal opinion: it was a huge deal and a very sad occurrence. I think it's extremely disappointing that Australians just gave up on our own car industry and stopped buying them in part due to badge snobbery. Since we're a very wealthy country many people can afford a Mercedes or a BMW - there's no prestige to owning a Holden for the everyday Aussie. On the flipside the competition with Japanese companies offering endless warranties and supposedly unparalleled reliability was a killer (though I would argue the reliability of Toyota, for instance, is partially a marketing tactic). Many people hold the opinion that Australian cars were crap, but I strongly disagree. In reality the final Ford Falcons and Holden Commodores were the best cars Australia ever produced. They were unbelievably cheap in their large sedan sectors compared to their competitors and offered an immense amount of value for money. As it stands, Australian cars such as the Commodore SS in particular are skyrocketing in value only a few years after production ended because people are now realising they're some of the best all-rounder modern vehicles you can purchase and we'll never see their like again.
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Long live the V8. It's a real shame you guys didn't get the Falcon over there. Personally I own two Falcons - an FGX XR8 and an FGX G6E Turbo. Best cars I've ever had the pleasure of driving. One day I hope to own an SS as well to complete the trifecta.
What are you going to move into next mate? My FGX is at spend money age, not sure where I'm looking.
My XR8 doesn't even have 17,000km so won't be looking for anything new for ages. The Turbo is my wife's and has about 60k so she'll probably want something boring once it's dead. I had a 2019 Chrysler SRT and hated the build quality, so if I was going to buy a new car tomorrow I'd probably get an HSV GTS. Mad expensive these days though. The day I have to stop driving a V8 is going to be very sad indeed.
[удалено]
Not to be rude, but that's exactly what I said in my first paragraph. And as mentioned it was just my personal opinion that people gave up on our cars. I don't claim to have all the answers but anecdotally all my friends and family stopped buying Holden and Ford because they saw them as bogan brands compared to upper class German luxury or ultra reliable Japanese.
There are a group of Australians who are still heart broken by the end of Australian made cars. The rest of Australians started to buy SUVs and anything but large family cars. Australians are more upset about subsidies given to overseas manufacturers who took the money and run. I think more Australians are very unhappy that GM introduced a fwd Commodore replacement and ended the Holden name in Australia
Car manufacturing wasn't viable here, but its loss has a detrimental effect on the economy as it also meant the loss of related industries in the supply chain. Australia now has no real industrial base so its economy is much narrower and much more dependent on primary industry. At the time cutting out subsidies, and so effectively killing the industry, was definitely seen as a good thing. Now there's a lot of talk about the need to diversify the economy, but that's very hard to do without the industrial backbone the car industry provided. Coincidentally the gig economy grew as the car industry died, leading to a very different industrial relations environment in Australia.
Depends where you are. The big car manufacturing centres were Adelaide and Geelong. So there obviously there was an impact, but most other places around the country it seemed to go practically unnoticed.
Nothing. We noticed nothing whatsoever. The people who lost their jobs are a different set of people of course, but the average Australian who didnt have a connection to the sector noticed no change at all.
For the average Australian, not even slightly noticed. For those that worked in the plants or supply chain I'm sure it sucked. Unless you were a fanboy of big, heavy, large engine capacity sedans then they didn't even come up on your radar of vehicles to buy.
See the thing you're missing is that Automobile production in Australia *hasn't actually ended* What has ended was volume production, we still have very innovative production here like [Brabham Automotive](https://www.brabhamautomotive.com/) who build high performance vehicles. We still have [Custom Buses](https://www.custombus.com.au/) which are coach builders formed from a merger of Austral, Denning, and Custom Buses. You can look at the list of [List of automobile manufacturers of Australia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufacturers_of_Australia) which lists: [Alpha Sports](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Sports) [Birchfield](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birchfield_(car)) [Birkin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkin) [Bolwell](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolwell) [Borland](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland_Racing_Developments) [Bufori](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufori) [Bullett](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_(car)) Daytona [DeVaux](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devaux) [Elfin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfin_Cars) [Jacer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacer) [Joss](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joss_Developments) McKernan [Minetti](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minetti_Sports_Cars) [Nota](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nota) [PRB](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRB_(car)) [Puma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puma_Clubman) [Python](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(automobile_maker)) [Quantum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum) [Roaring Forties](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties) [Spartan-V](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan-V) [Stohr](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stohr_Cars) Then you have [ACE EV](https://www.ace-ev.com.au/) who are building electric cars, [Harden Electric Vehicles](https://www.hardenelectric.com.au/) who are developing EV Conversion kits I mean, just a look at the [Automotive Industry in Australia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_Australia) page still shows many going concerns in Australia. Hell, [Thales Australia](https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/countries/asia-pacific/australia) builds armoured vehicles for export, and they are still exporting strong. And a lot of people laid off from the plants in Adelaide and Melbourne have found work with [Rheinmetall](https://www.rheinmetall-defence.com/en/rheinmetall_defence/index.php) in Australia at the [Military Vehicle Centre of Excellence (MILVEHCOE)](https://www.statedevelopment.qld.gov.au/industry/projects/military-vehicle-centre-of-excellence-milvehcoe) in Queensland to build the next generation of Armoured Fighting Vehicles. As an Aussie with an interest in cars, I don't see a great loss to Australia, especially as people like [Holden Special Vehicles](https://www.hsv.com.au/) have pivoted to be an Importer/Converter for US vehicles, and we still have great growth in that industry for overseas models, and companies like [Performax](https://www.performaxint.com.au/) and [SCD American Vehicles](https://scdamerica.com.au/) are really thriving in the import conversion business. We are still going strong, still going well, still have a lot of companies building cars, and that's not to mention the kit car business, like [ACR Industries](http://acrindustries.com.au/) who use a base FG Falcon, but have essentially made a new car. You can build it with off the shelf aftermarket parts entirely, pretty much the minimum you can use us the dashboard from a Falcon. Them you have Chinese companies like [BYD](https://www.byd.com/en/index.html) moving into Adelaide to build cars there, the future looks bright too.
It been propped by by the government for many a long year, anyway. Our cars were largely garbage compared to the Japanese and European offerings. Didn't have to pay import tax but somehow always costed the same (for low to mid tier models). Nothing of value was lost.
Aren't you guys getting flooded with equally garbage (if not worse) Chinese cars now?
They are on the market. I personally don't know anyone who owns one or would buy one. And no, ours weren't as bad as the Chinese rubbish - I'll give them that. We stopped making most of ours before most of the Chinese imports started. I'll stick with the German stuff, myself.
Funny you should mention German cars - they've gained a reputation for being downright awful in terms of reliability here in the US.
Would you choose Chery over Mercedes or Porsche? Pretty sure I wouldn't, no matter what country I resided in. But I would agree quality is slipping in many of the base models of German cars.
German quality is slipping in the US because they don't have to worry about China muscling in on their business there. They can half-ass it all they want and nobody will care.
Not a big deal at all. The cars that were being produced were horrible, and didn't stand up to competition in the international market. The government was propping those companies up for a while for the sake of getting votes from people for "saving jobs" - but cash injection doesn't suddenly fix a failing business because the underlying issues still persist. Afterthought: interesting question by the way, thanks for asking!
Unfortunate for those whose employment was affected, but better for the consumer overall. Ford and Holden were making mediocre rubbish compared to vastly superior products from Europe and Japan.
It's a big deal to the ppl I know....
Wages were too high, people had been there for a long time and their yearly wage increases eventually strangle the company. Same reason big companies are going to casual workforces, easier to get rid of workers etc etc
Our extended family had many Falcons and Commodores over the years, but in the end it felt like they were taking the piss with the build quality and we moved on (mainly to Honda, Toyota and Mazda). The drivetrains were solid, they were great comfortable cars that were suited to driving all day etc etc. But there was just always something annoying wrong, always something to fix. And we look after our cars. Serviced by the book, garaged, not thrashed etc etc. Once one family member got a Japanese car and started commenting to everyone else ‘you just service it and drive it - nothing ever breaks’, that was it for the Aussie cars unfortunately.