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Holden Produces Final Chevrolet Caprice PPV

On Friday May 19th, General Motors’ Australian subsidiary, Holden, produced the final unit of Chevrolet Caprice PPV, or Police Pursuit Vehicle at the Holden Port Elizabeth factory. Yet with all the attention on the final Chevrolet SS on May 25th, no one seemed to notice. Order books for the Caprice PPV were closed earlier on in the year.

A decontended Holden Caprice full-size sedan with police-specific features, the Chevy Caprice PPV was sold exclusively to law enforcement agencies. Not only did the model give GM a rear-drive police sedan to compete with the Dodge Charger, but it also revived the Caprice name in North America, which has been discontinued since 1996. The vehicle reached its sales peak in 2013, when it accounted for 3,899 deliveries.

Sales Results - USA - Caprice

YearJanFebMar AprMayJunJul AugSepOctNov DecTotal
201822 711 40
201760 2526 6141 8238 60183 7128 18693
201621 7193 1897 18758 78 149188 1241,021
2015124 98151 147124 159140 176155 155196 2201,845
2014200 322247 288241 434357 427334 301288 2883,727
2013237 201241 233129 511182 718514 273248 4123,899
201292 155121 174313 325500 731454 343281 2453,734
2011 23 4290 203140 116167 99880

Since the Caprice PPV wasn’t available to retail customers, enthusiasts have been known to scoop up decommissioned Caprice PPVs and turn them into personal cars by adding wheels, grilles, and other features from either the Chevy SS sedan or the Holden Caprice.

The end of Caprice PPV production marks the final vehicle on the GM Zeta platform to be produced for export to the United States, wrapping up Holden’s North American export program, which traces its roots to the 2004 Pontiac GTO and includes the Pontiac G8 along with the Chevy SS.

With the Caprice PPV gone, GM will begin offering the tenth-generation Chevrolet Impala for law enforcement fleets.

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Comments

  1. Good job GM ==another mistake leave Ford & Dodge producing vehicles for you police . Again what the hell your you thinking

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  2. Meanwhile Dodge just keeps pumping out Chargers for police departments from one end of the country to the other.

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    1. FCA might be pumping out Chargers, but at zero to little profit… while GM is laser focused on profit rather than meaningless volume targets.

      FCA is more like the old, pre bankruptcy GM.
      The new GM is more like every other responsible automaker.

      Reply
      1. The flaw in that thinking though is there’ll be no profit if they don’t sell enough units. They’d even lose money if they don’t sell enough, as they wouldn’t have recouped the cost of development. Therefore, volume targets aren’t meaningless, provided they have a reasonable profit margin. You need demand to create volume, and volume to create profit, after all.

        FCA’s product line (in Australia, at least) leave a lot to be desired, with poor quality and reliability plaguing their brands, so any volume they can get is a plus for them. If GM were smart, they’d move the tooling and set up the production supply network for the Commodore and Caprice over there since they’re so adamant to stop production here, in order to continue production of those models for the US market for at least another five years, even with a similar spec Caprice V as what we get here for the general public. This would cost next to nothing in the scheme of things and teach Americans how to properly build a rear wheel drive car.

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        1. To clear that up: I didn’t say that volume targets are entirely irrelevant. They’re simply meaningless when looking at the Charger compared to the Impala.

          So, with a vehicle like the Impala – which carries significantly higher pricing/profit power than any other Chevy sedan outside of the now-dead Chevy SS, volume is not as vital to the business structure as it is for the Sonic or Cruze. Add to that a typically long vehicle line lifetime for the model, which amortizes the initial cost structure across many years, and volume becomes less important still. That takes care of the initial (mostly fixed) costs in bringing the vehicle to market. The rest of the costs are variable.

          In the variable side is where the PPU (profit per unit average) and associated ATP (average transaction price) are highly important. The Charger sells at decent volumes at really low ATPs because of incentives. The Impala is the opposite, despite the Charger being available for much higher MSRPs, thereby being capable of higher PPU than the Impala (in theory) but not in practice due to sky high incentives and an extremely small takerate for any Chargers above $38k.

          Bottom line: real people are willing to pay top dollar for the Impala. But to get people to shell out for the Dodge, you need to pile on incentives.

          All that applies to the retail segment. It’s quite different for fleet or police orders. But I hope it sheds light on the behind the scenes financial structures.

          Reply
  3. The truth is both fleet sale product from Chrysler and Ford are low profit models.

    The Ford Explorer is the prime vehicle of most departments. I know here locally the sell as low as $25k before being outfitted for the local department. Not much meat on those bones.

    The Charger is an older cars that the tooling was paid for long ago so they have more room on price. But departments are now loving the SUV for more room and the V6 for better economy.

    Departments really are looking at operating cost and MPG is key.

    I expect GM to use the short wheelbase Traverse and a Traverse into police vehicles.

    I have a lot of contact on the Explorer as it is well used in he area. In fact I have a new one out side as the neighbor has one for patrol. He did not want it at first but now would never give it up for a car.

    Police sales in general are like OE tire sale and unless it us a specialty unit it is low profit.

    Reply
    1. Chevy could have an Rwd sedan in the works the public don’t know about. FCA is totally replacing the Charger in 20′ so is Fords PIs on new platforms, in other words a platform have to be “old” to be a police car.

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  4. can I get a holden in USA?

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  5. This has to be the most worthless piece of crap vehicle ever produced. We have seven of these in our police fleet. Nothing but problem after problem. We should have bought a few Yugos and been better off then this junk.

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  6. GM Detroit closed GM Fishermans Bend & GM Elizabeth, citing that they were losing money. I have had family & friends work for Australian car manufacturers & own car parts manufacturers. Inside information was that Holden was making money. All the Journalists have towed the GM Detroit line of losses at Holden. Now keep in mind another problem GM claimed against Holden was it was a small right hand drive market supplier. Fact – It was capable of making both left & right hand drive models on the same line at the same time. Also in multiple equipment levels such as base model up to Statesman in sedan, wagon & utility. They had no need to send vehicles to another plant to put the steering on the other side. Now as for the financial loss claimed by GM Detroit, a Google search turns up the websites of two major accounting firms. The balance sheet at the end of 2017 shows a PROFIT of about 120 million dollars. But on closer inspection of the debit column the sum of 150 million dollars appears. It was money sent from Detroit to Fishermans Bend for staff redundancy payments. If Holden was not closed down then that payment would not be needed. But the 150 million shows on arrival from Detroit & again when it was paid to the sacked staff. That totals 300 million dollars in the debit column that should not be there. So in conclusion if Holden had kept making cars into 2018 then the 2017 balance sheet would have shown a profit of over 400 million dollars.

    Reply

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