There are currently less than 2,000 new Holden vehicles left for sale in Australia, with General Motors preparing to end all Holden vehicle sales in the country before the end of 2020.
According to local publication AutoTalk.com.au, Holden sold 1,113 new vehicles in July 2020 and now has just under 2,000 units left in stock between dealership inventory, storage yards and in-transit vehicles.
There are still some Holden Colorado pickup trucks on their way to Australia from GM’s Rayong Assembly plant in Thailand, while some Holden Commodore sedans are also en route to the country from Germany. It is understood that these will be the last shipments of either vehicle to Australia. Some Holden Equinox and Holden Acadia units are still in storage yards, as well, so there are still a good deal of new cars on their way to Holden dealerships to help pad inventory for the latter half of 2020.
AutoTalk.com.au also reports that some Holden dealerships have already begun removing their Holden signage, while others have gone an extra step and already begun representing other vehicle makes. Other former Holden dealerships are using their dealership space to sell used cars until they can sign on a new make to replace Holden.
GM announced it would pull Holden out of Australia back in February. In a statement, the automaker said the move was a “decisive action to transform its international operations, building on the comprehensive strategy it laid out in 2015 to strengthen its core business, drive significant cost efficiencies and take action in markets that cannot earn an adequate return for its shareholders.”
The automaker also pulled out of Thailand this year as part of its efforts to focus on markets where its core business is strongest and completed its departure from Uzbekistan last year.
Comments
Most dealers have already rebranded and transferred any unsold stock to larger dealers.
In Melbourne SE, Dandenong & Berwick still have a selection.
When will all the idiots running Apple, Coca Cola, Ford, McDonald’s, and Nike realise how brilliant Mary Barra is and start to copy her ideas of closing down and retreating from so many markets as the way to true business success?
Simon, luckily those other companies you mention won’t copy Mary Barra as she is the idiot. Unfortunately GM and it’s employees will suffer in the future as a result of her poor leadership and business strategy.
I kept hoping she’d acquire PSA so Carlos Taveres could take control.
GM is in real danger. Sure, profitable quarters much like Sears/Kmart as they transformed into a dumpster fire.
And now she acts like lame Blazer and a poorly named Cadillac EV will save GM. Just wait until a real US/China trade war and watch GM implode. A company like Honda will acquire it for spare parts.
A true leader figures out how to be successful in a challenging market. Anyone can simply walk away. Eventually after walking away from every challenging market you end up with a small shell of a company.
The question is not so much that GM is retiring its Holden brand. That I understand. Holden must be retired in the same way that GMs Pontiac, Vauxhall, Opel, La Salle and Oldsmobile brands have been. GM simply has far to many brands. In a global international market, GM no longer needs an Australia only brand.
My interest is how successful the new General Motors Special Vehicles (GMSV) will be in Australia going forward. The key to GMSV success in Australia will I think, be the right range of vehicles.
Australia’s federal and state governments have recently replaced their large fleets of long wheel base Holden Caprices with BMWs. Perhaps if GM planning had been different these Holden Caprices could have been replaced with right hand drive Cadillac CT6 cars supplied by GMSV.
For the most part GM is rapidly becoming a ‘truck company’, and that’s shame given the outstanding passenger cars that have come from GM assembly lines all around the world.
Of course the larger GM-H dealerships in Australia may well become the new GMSV dealers.
Holden died when GM needed funds after the collapse after the GFC. When the LNP Abbott bought BMW’s and signed a poor free trade agreement and withdrew manufacturing funding and put the money to farming. GMSV should never exist because GM should have gone global and RH drive when factory closure was announced. I see a lot of mustangs and rangers and rams on the roads. RIP GM
I doubt GM understand what it has done to itself in Australia. It is a waste of time trying to sell other GM brands or set up new special vehicle operations.
It is a waste if time. Australia had a love affair with Holden, Ford was the cousin. The lover, GM, left. Ran away, gone. We are betrayed, and we, the customers, are no longer interested.
Take your body abd sell it elswhere.
STAY OUT OF AUSTRALIA, GM!
Funny how all you people forget. The writing was on the wall when GM went bankrupt during the global financial crisis in America. To survive they had to get a government bail out and streamline their business. It was the end of Holden then.
I have only ever owned Holden vehicles. Whilst I have worked in the car industry and driven many other vehicles nothing ever came close to an Australian built rear wheel drive car. Built here by Australian people for Australian people. The death of Holden in Australia is a kick in the guts to those of us who are born and raised here. Not even the government understanding the implications of closing down a true home grown company.
Killing off Holden like other Australian icons is just opening the floodgates for ever other country to dump there crap on Australia.
Australia is NOT a dumping ground.
Let’s get back to our roots and start rebuilding the brands with the high quality products that we are known for.
Barra needs to be walked (no thrown) out the door at GM.. When will GM wake up and hire a younger, more educated, and less expensive CEO.
If the Australian auto industry went left hand drive after ww2 we would not be having this conversation. Instead we stuck with the UK and therefore could not export cheaply to 90% of the world. Holden and Ford were both fantastic in the post war era but it was never going to last forever based on our population.
GM were very keen for us to go to left hand drive but OUR government insisted on right hand drive claiming it would be too expensive to change before the FJ arrived.
This breaks my heart….such a great brand of cars fleeced by poor decision making by know-it-alls who weren’t welcome to change. Nothing stays the same forever….in my dreams I would’ve loved to see holden make a monte carlo worthy of the namesake as GM is overly obsessed with it’s future being “electric”.
Holden was never Australian. Profits went back to U.s. Very little was put back into infrastructure in Australia. Australia can have its own car manufacturers making cars for the Australian market. If countries like Germany,Japan and other high salary paying countries can do it. Why can’t Australia?
IMO It’s still not too late but Holden needs to be GM RHD division. 2 billion or so people live in RHD nations, they can spearhead into UK, Japan, southeastern Africa, etc instead of Australia/NZ only and stay afloat. Even the “cheap” China-made models in emerging RHD markets should be Holden.
I think this is a sound decision on GM’s part…GM had to many divisions for two long that where basically the same cars with a slightly better interior and body work…in other words a waste on money. That’s exactly what Holden had turned into… pouring money into a never ending money pit. If GM can sell Buicks in China to then why not Chevy’s in Australia? I mean the Colorado, Equinox, are REBAGED Chevy’s. This is the NWO for car companies if it doesn’t sell then get rid of it.
As said before nobody wants a Chebby in Australia, talking about pissing on someone’s shoes. Closed the local brand for some mid-westren US brand won’t fly worldwide. Buick works in China because of that’s what the statesman drove for decades there.
Holden have/had excellent RHD engineers for their roads, no way in the world you can say a VF Commodore and a current Impala is somehow related, even though some rebadged GMs was Holdens.
GM…All China, All the time..
I think GM should sell the Holden name to myself for $1 so that we can continue to make Holden’s here in Australia. I would start by keeping the best of the best that Holden employed and make cheap utes and supercars. Something special something unique for Australia. Anyway just a thought.
GMH was never a very profitable business. Even in the “glory years” of the 1950s and 60s when two-thirds of all cars on the road were Holdens the ROI for GMH was only about 1-2%, because the multiple factories (there were assembly plants in every state capital) were hopelessly overmanned.
GMH went belly up in the early 1970s and had to be bailed out by Detroit. They collapsed again in the early 1980s and the head office wanted to sell out then. The government increased tariffs and subisidies before GM agreed to commit to GMH.
The decision to quit local production was made in 2014 when the head office decided the cost of converting to FWD made local production unviable.
The post-production plan was to import vehicles from Europe, South Korea and the US. The decision in 2017 to quit Europe left GMH with no future.