Tuesday 17th October 2017

PH Footnote: Aussie car industry demise

The business of building models for the Australian markets has finally been wound up. It was a long time coming...​

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For at least five years, it's been as plain as that gargantuan grille on the latest Roller that the Australian motor manufacturing industry - which officially dies this month in favour of a string of importerships - was a goner.

The combination of globalisation, fragmentation of models, the improving durability of cars and a smallish market by world standards means the idea of separate Aussie factories making models specially adapted "for Australian conditions" is no longer sustainable. Chuck in the coming electrification era and you have an even greater reason for globalisation.

Besides, Aussie buyers themselves have shown they want the variety and modernity the rest of the world is routinely offered, and manufacturers' only way of meeting that is to send bulk sea carrier-loads of new models Down Under.

The death is still a shock, though. I was born around the time Australia's mass production industry officially began with "Australia's Own" Holden in 1948. The fact that this was a GM product with strong links to America wasn't perceived. What my Dad knew was that the car was made in Australia and every serviceman (rarely woman) recently returned from the war wanted - even deserved - to have one on the drive

For 30 years, Holden reigned, joined in 1960 by the Ford Falcon, a more blatantly American car yet also regarded as Australian because its US equivalent wasn't familiar: we didn't travel much in those days. All we knew was that the (rare) European cars we saw, and especially those Pommy Austins, Morrises, Rovers, Hillmans and Humbers "fell to bits" on tough Aussie roads, which featured hundreds of miles of washboard surfaces the foreigners were never engineered to tackle. We loved that - foreign cars falling to bits while the rest of us just drove on.

There was a glorious moment, just as I was leaving Oz to seek my fortune in Europe, when Opel Commodores under test to become Holdens suffered cataclysmic structural failures barely halfway through a traditional 10,000 mile torture-test on Holden's legendary "rough track", which all new Holdens were effortlessly supposed to survive. It was life-affirming.

But we should have known: this, as far back as 1980, was the beginning of the end. The Holden Commodore (though we couldn't admit it) was a strengthened European - and a better car for its roots.

When the European taste for such big cars finally died, the Aussie versions - even the specialist high performance V8 still spoken of in hushed tones - had to go. Like all Australian cars they lived a good long life, though, and will be fondly remembered.

Steve Cropley

[Commodore photo: LAT photo]

[warch]

Aussies do love their own mythology about how they're the toughest people in the world and how their cars are built to suit. Of course the reality these days is that most Australians live in the suburbs, rarely have to drive on poorly surfaced roads and would never contemplate driving anywhere truly remote.

That said, Australian Holdens and Fords of the muscle car era were glorious iconic cars. My father in law has photos of some the company cars he had when he worked for Holden in 70s, really really cool looking cars.