Holden Looking To Make Up Lost Ground As Sales Plummet
6
In a market that is up by 9.4 percent in the first eight months of the year, Holden’s sales have face-planted 10 percent. And if the brand’s average monthly rate of 9,500 deliveries continues, it will have sold 115,000 cars by the end of the year in the Australasia region, joining the miserable company of 118,800 sales in 1994 and 96,500 in 1993 — Holden’s pair of all-time-lows.
What’s the issue? For one, Commodore sales have really taken a stumble. The record-low sales could be reflective of the anticipation for the VF Series arriving next year in June 2013, or it could be that consumers are warming up to Toyota. Perhaps a mix of both. Another factor is that there were no new Colorado pickup trucks to sell for the first six months of 2012, as the transition to the all-new model took place. Holden is hoping to move at least 18,000 all-new Colorados before 2013.
The silver lining is that August was the best month of the year so far for The Lion, thanks to a 0.5 percent finance offer. Not the best way to move metal, but it seems to be necessary.
Google+
Australia’s population simply isn’t large enough to support a car company building and developing its own products. I’m not sure its been able to deliver cars to the US market on a consistently reliable pace. Just saw my first Tauras PI the other day. Its size gives it a presence on the street that the Caprice doesn’t have. Worrying.
Holden is sold across Australasia. Australia alone has over 22 million people, New Zealand has about 4.5 million. That works out to over 26 million people. That’s pretty large.
*24 million for Australia
There’s not been a shortage of negative news to scare away loyalists either. Same with Opel over in Europe. Or, “Government Motors” in the US (I use that term only as an example–I hate it).
What about sales of the Cruze, Aveo/Sonic and Spark or are these recognized as Chevy’s rebadged, or Korean imports. Personally the Holden versions are awesome looking
with the mining boom inflating the au $ the imports have dropped in price, holden can’t/won’t match this, they also need to go back to 3 year models, when VF arrives VE will be almost 7 years old, as for 0.5% holden was not first to do this, they had to match the others.