- (unintelligible attempt at an aussie accent)
Legendary Aussie automaker Holden
is officially rooted.
The most sick as Aussie car manufacturer
is carckin' it after an incredible 164 year run.
As Bitsaremissing, Henry, and Toyo
have all shut their plants down under,
there won't be any cars manufactured
in Oz maybe forever.
It's buggered, no doubt, but how did a company
with so much great history carck it?
Was it pissed away by the yanks or what?
In this vid, we're gonna sort out
why Holden was bang on for so long
and try and pinpoint the beginning of their dogs brekky.
And sort out if there's any chance the brand
will be resurrected in the future.
Ages ago, Ol mate Jim,
a dirty pomme fresh off the boat, set up shop
making saddles with the crow-eaters in Delayed (🍐🍐🍐!).
Back at the turn of the 20th century,
some cars came from the factory
as a chassis plus drive train but no body.
So coach building blokes like Ol' mate Jim
would chuck together custom bodies or coaches
to fit top the chassis.
'Round 1923 they were doing 12,000 vehicle bodies a year
which included Model T bodies for the yanks,
until Henry and his boys could finish building a factory
of their own in Oz.
Towards the end of the 20s,
the Great Depression really f***d Holden, and them boys
went from crakin out 34,000 bodies a year to 1,600.
Get f****d mate.
They were broke as.
until General Motors copped Holden in 1931
renaming the company General Motors Holden Limited.
GM kept the brand kickin' and Holden
was able to continue building bodies for Chrysler,
Austin, DeSoto, Morris, and Willys Overland.
The first official Holden car debuted in 1948.
It goes by a few different names:
the 48-215, and the FX.
But it was marketed as the Holden
to honour their founder, Ol' mate Jim.
- In Australia, this says it all, the FX.
The first Holden, the 1948 symbol
of our manufacturing maturity.
- This mid-sized sedan had bitchin' fenders
and a big chrome grill.
Aussies were crackin' fats,
'cause this was the first full on Aussie car,
something that we could finally call our own.
Sales were bonzer and Holden followed up the 48-215
with other models and by the end of the 1950s,
they were slingin' cars to heaps of countries.
By 1962, they sold their millionth car.
They employed almost 24,000 blokes
across seven factories throughout Oz
and even though this period marked the peak of
Holden production, they were just gettin' goin'.
The Holden HK Monaro launched in 1968.
This sleek, Coke bottle style car was loosely styled
after some Chevys at the time and was available
with a 350 cubic inch Chevy Bent 8 that put out 250 ponies.
A Monaro GTS 327 driven by Brucy McPhee
won the legendary Bathurst 500 the year it came out
which gave Holden its first race victory.
Holden proved that they could keep up
with yankee performance and their style was bang on too.
Have a look at this beaut!
The Sandman is a banger example of an off-beat car
that'd probs never cut it in other parts of the world,
but in Oz, this weird surf waggon Ute was legend.
Holden Special Vehicles, or HSV was a performance division
that kicked off in 1987 replacing the Holden dealer team.
HSV has made some of the coolest performance vehicles
to ever come out of Oz.
One of my personal favourites is the HSV Maloo.
Named for the aboriginal word for thunder,
the Z series Maloo R8
is the fastest performance ute in the world,
even faster than the Dodge Ram SRT-10.
You know, the one with the Viper motor.
Makes me bummed we'll never see the R8 Maloo in the states.
So, when did things start going tits up?
- So long, mate.
You've been bloody good to me, but it's time to move on.
- Peter Hanenberger took over as managing director
of Holden in 1999 and from the first bounce,
Hanenberger had a sick as vision for the company.
He proposed an ambitious 10 year plan
that included the development of a small, cheap as,
all-wheel drive car that could compete
with the BMW 3 Series.
Henny-mate disregarded the opinions of GM execs abroad
and focused on what he thought Aussies wanted
out of a car.
Henny-mate understood who drove Holdens
and he wasn't afraid to lay into it a little bit.
- [Narrator] Australia, what's your favourite sport?
- [Group Of People] Football.
- [Narrator] Snack?
- [Group Of People] Pies.
- [Narrator] Animal?
- [Group Of People] Kangaroo.
- [Narrator] And what's your favourite car, Australia?
- [Group Of People] Holden.
- A good example of a car that catered
to the local market is the Holden Ute.
It's basically the personification of business up front,
party in the back.
The Ute was wildly popular with spanner monkeys,
cockies, and tradies.
By 2002, 21% of all cars driven in Oz were Holdens.
That's crackers.
To put that into perspective,
GM holds the biggest market share in the states at only 17%.
That year, Holden posted a $265 million dollar profit.
At the helm, was Henny mate
who is regarded as the last great director of the company.
Key word, last.
Henny mate's plan called for the expansion
of Holden's plant located in Elizabeth.
Henneberg emphasised the need for halo car development
to showcase performance and the result
was the Commodore SS V.
It was one of the most insane cars on the planet.
You could get it in either a sedan, or a Ute
and like most halo cars, the tech
in the Commodore SS V was supposed to trickle down
to the rest of the lineup.
Needless to say, Henneberg knew which direction
to steer the ship.
Whether the suits in Detroit agreed with him or not.
And guess what?
His plan was spot on.
Holden continued to post record profits.
In 2003, they made big bickies
and in 2004, even bigger bickies.
But that was the last year they ever made a single prawn.
That also coincided
with the retirement of legend Henny-mate.
Uh oh, things are startin' to get buggered.
After Henneberg retired, GM execs saw an opportunity
to tighten their leash on Holden.
GM wanted Holden to be their global distribution centre
for that part of the world
instead of focusing on just the Aussie market.
Essentially GM was telling an Australian company
not to make any Australian cars.
Holden was spittin dummies and the decision
would prove to be one of the first death blows
in Holden's slow demise.
Soon after the departure of peter Henneberg in 2003,
his 10 year plan was chucked
in the bin.
Holden close to $1 billion dollaroos deep
into the development of the VE Bomb-a-door
struggled to bring the car to market.
People wanted more fuel efficiency
and holden failed to deliver.
Factors outside of the company's control
such as skyrocketing global exchange rates
made exporting cars way more costly
and the number of exports shrivelled up.
Just when things seemed they couldn't get any more, pissed
the global financial crisis of 2008 hit.
GM had to sacro brands like Hummer, Saturn
and very unfortunately for Holden, Pontiac.
This was s***luck for Holden
who produced the Pontiac G8 for export.
That's right, if you have a G8 it's Aussie.
As more and more Holden models were discontinued
to make room for re-badged GM models,
the company started losing its down under identity.
In 2013, GM announced
that they would shut the Holden plant
in Elizabeth, one of their highest producing plants.
And the last car manufacturing plant in Oz.
And in 2017, the factory officially carcked it
leaving the last 25 blokes out of a job.
One of the last cars to roll off the line
was the HSV GTSR W1.
That's heaps of letters.
The fastest, most powerful, and most expensive car
ever produced in Australia and it's a beaut.
And it's also proof of the disconnect
between what Aussies want and what's sustainable.
Around this time, Toyo, Mitsu,
and Ford have all closed their factories as well.
It wasn't looking good.
(upbeat music)
With so many manufacturers pulling out of Oz,
it's clear that it wasn't just out of touch decisions
of the yanks that lead to Holden's downfall.
It has heaps to do with the percentage
of the global car market that Australia represents.
The countries with the most car sales in 2018
were China, the US, and Japan.
Australia comes in at 16th on that list
with 873,000 cars sold, just a fraction
of the biggest markets.
So if it costs heaps to make cars for a small market,
it won't be profitable.
At the same time, manufacturing in places
like GM's Thailand plant costs nothing
compared to the parts and labour in Australia.
So it became the preferred country
to produce GM cars for that region.
But as sales dropped worldwide and global markets
became even less profitable,
GM pulled the plug on the Chevy plant in Thailand as well.
Sorry, sorry Thailand.
In 2015, GM stopped manufacturing Chevrolets in Europe
and in 2017, they sold their European brand Opel to PSA.
So, it's clear that these closures are part
of a bigger plan by GM to curb profit loss
and expand in more profitable sectors.
While it's easy to blame GM and say oh,
the yanks really mucked up Holden,
there are a myriad of other factors
that lead to Holden shutting down,
many of them beyond anyone's control.
Sure, GM's decisions diluted a brand, no doubt,
and detracted from their purely Australian image,
but those decisions also kept the company afloat
for so many years.
It's sad that such an iconic brand
will be lost to history after so many years
and so many awesome cars.
And I can say as an American, I've always liked Holden cars
and one day I'll hopefully get my hands on one of my own.
Hopefully an old Maloo or Dunny door.
(sighing)
We mourn with you, Aussies.
♪ I will remember Maloo ♪
♪ Maloo remember me ♪
♪ Won't let time pass me by ♪
♪ Let me by ♪
Will Holden ever be resurrected in the future?
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Should GM bring back Holden if viable, I think so.
I'm just not holding my breath.
Let me know what your favourite Holden model is
down in the comments.
Yeah, I think it's a sad story,
but you know, that's how the economy be sometimes.
(chuckling)
I don't know money, I don't know business.
I'm a guy on the YouTube just talkin'.
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Thank you so much for watching.
Australia, I love you.
Be kind, hooroo.