yet another Falcon bashing ny mainstream media

[ILLaViTaR]

Originally Posted by RATT

I think you're all reading too much into it..

There's just so many of the slander ridden articles everywhere that the typical person will believe.

I think the degree of unfairness in this article justifies the actions that people in this thread are taking.

[Gobes32]

I personally feel that Holden are copping a lot of heat at the moment too, Toyota are still untouchable........

[ChemicalHorizon]

Its like telling two people how they are doing at work in a performance review:

Ford: We're happy with your performance, your achieveing all your targets and not killing people at work...Keep it up. Also, we heard the boss of your parent company likes global platforms...?

Holden: WoW, only 11% ! Your exceeding our expectations, is there anything we can do for you? Also, we heard the boss of your parent company got fired, and they're about to go bankrupt...care to comment?

Its the way the article it worded.

[onfire]

Its news media, 9/10 its a negative article. It wouldnt be news if it wasnt negative.

[irlewy86]

Full page editorial in the Courier mail yesterday taking aim at Rudd and Holden. Probably a lot worse than the sum total of all the small attacks on Ford so far.

[vztrt]

This the article??

Drive away bad deals

By Mike O'Connor

April 06, 2009 12:00am

THE Federal Government has missed a golden opportunity.

It should have approved the sale of Oz Minerals to Chinese interests but only on the condition that they bought General Motors Holden as well.

While General Motors' American chief executive Rick Wagoner's resignation last week was largely an act of political symbolism demanded by the White House, his demise may well augur the fate of our beloved true-blue, Made in Australia Commodore.

That is unless the Rudd Government is prepared to pour hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars into the same hole into which it has already committed itself to toss $6.2 billion in propping up a failing industry.

The managing director of GM Holden, Mark Reuss, has already been softening up Canberra for the big fiscal bite, warning that the company may need emergency funding to avoid collapse and last week put its workforce on alternating shifts – one week on, one week off with half pay for the rostered days off.

The Government has already promised to hand over $149 million to assist the company in building a four-cylinder car next year with a further $450 million needed from GM in the US.

Now here's the thing – can you see the American Government, which has already pumped billions of taxpayer dollars into GM to keep it afloat, allowing the company to hand over $450 million of this to its tiny Australian affiliate, one which has not made a profit since 2004.

The American public would scream, and rightly so. Holden claims that the $450 million has been put aside by the parent company and will be forthcoming.

This overlooks another inconvenient truth, for when the US Government agreed to prop up GM, it did so on a number of contractually binding conditions, one of which was that any deal that involved the company spending more than $US100 million had to be personally approved by President Barack Obama.

So we are being asked to believe that Obama will happily wave goodbye to half a billion dollars so that Holden can produce a four-cylinder car. Yeah, sure he will.

The car itself has been hailed as the saviour of Holden. Rubbish. It will be just another small car, except that it will be more expensive to build and, if it is to be built at all, will need to be subsidised by the Australian taxpayer.

Nor is there any guarantee that the $149 million promised by the Government, plus a further $30 million pledged by the South Australian Government, won't be sucked up by cash-starved GM.

The very fact that Holden is only now talking about building a small car is proof of how slow it has been to react to changing world tastes.

Much has also been made of Holden's exports but sales to the Middle East have hit the wall and of the 25,000 Commodores sent to the US last year and rebadged as Pontiacs, 11,000 are still sitting "on the grass" and being deeply discounted by dealers desperate to shift them.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proudly declares that only 15 countries in the world can build a car from scratch. That's exactly the point. All the other countries are too smart to bother and have better things to do with their money.

In 2004, Holden was selling 178,000 cars locally. Last year it sold 130,000, giving it less than 13 per cent of the market and was outsold by Toyota by more than 9000 vehicles a month.

In London last week, Rudd lectured the world on the evils of protectionism, warning that if countries were to shield their industries from international competition there could be no economic recovery.

He made a good point but not surprisingly failed to mention that successive Australian governments have protected the car industry from imports and that his Government continues to do so.

The so-called luxury car tax is nothing more than a tax on imported vehicles cutting in, by an incredible coincidence, at that price point at about which BMWs, Mercedes-Benz and Audis enter the market.

It tries to give it some legitimacy by calling it a "luxury" tax thus implying that it is a tax on rich people who can obviously afford it and is therefore a form of wealth redistribution, taking from the rich and giving it to the poor in an exercise straight from the Robin Hood School of Economics.

Nonsense. It's a tax levied to protect Holden and Ford. The Government also continues to tax imported vehicles, this protectionist tax currently being 10 per cent and due to be reduced to 5 per cent by 2010.

The rude truth is that Australia can't afford to have a car manufacturing industry. Our market is simply too small and the industry only continues to exist because of the massive, and frequently hidden, subsidies being poured into it by governments frightened of the political fallout that would be generated by plant closures.

Here's a thought. Ford recently sold its Jaguar and Land Rover brands to Indian car maker Tata and GM already has a Chinese business partner in the form of the Shanghai Automotive Company.

Don't be surprised if you wake up one morning to find Holden's management answering to Beijing and Ford's to Mumbai.

[ADSXR8]

We all know what the abrievation for "Richard" is!

Nice story.

[banarcus]

That article is written by a person who knows what's going on. This is just the beginning.

[buggerlugs]

If you live up this way Mike O'Connor writes a very humourous article in the Courier Mail each saturday. He is a very clever man. Thats the best article I have read on the Car Industries plight in a long time...............

[RATT]

From the article.

Sales of the Toyota Aurion fell roughly 50 per cent and the Toyota Camry by 35 per cent

I don't think anyone is untouchable.

[Blackice504]

when is the media right about anything all they do is blow things out of control its all ratings and money for them and they do not care if it effect people or other peoples jobs the fact is i can not wait till media can be in trouble for writing things that have no fact.

or for writing things that gets our troops killed because they have disclosed the exact locations of where they are ect. its up to us as people to do something about these news papers groups and tv Stations for writing the wrong things or just ill informed information.

[AUIIForte]

Originally Posted by FalconXR6

I would say the loosers are the people paying cash for V6 Commodores, Toyota Camry's, large 4wd's and imported hatch backs (i.e. Hyundai, Kia, etc).

Why am I a loser for buying my self a 4x4? I do a fair bit of off road activity that I know no other car could do.

[mcflux]

Wah wah wah wah one-eyed Ford fans go off-tap yet again. If you took off your blue-tinted oval glasses, and ignored some of the errors (Prez of Ford Australia... easy enough mistake to type in Australia while thinking America), you'd find the article is a general lament at the state of car sales in Australia.

Even the title is loosely based on Toyota's old Oh What A Feeling slogan.

As for the comment on Commodore "only" being down 11%, that was probably a pleasant surprise for Holden as they may have been projecting a 20% loss.

"Poorly performing" Falcon and Territory sales... who here would say that Falcon and Territory models are selling very well at this point in time?

[Wally]

Originally Posted by buggerlugs

If you live up this way Mike O'Connor writes a very humourous article in the Courier Mail each saturday. He is a very clever man. Thats the best article I have read on the Car Industries plight in a long time...............

The Holden chairman, Mark Reuss, struck back with a Letter to The Editor this morning titled "Industry Worth Keeping". He points out that Auto manufacturing is the lergest manufacturer in the country, supports 64,000 families, puts $5b in wages back into the economy, Holden's R&D budget was more than any other private sector employer at $420m, etc.

[FalconXR6]

Originally Posted by AUIIForte

Why am I a loser for buying my self a 4x4? I do a fair bit of off road activity that I know no other car could do.

Cool.
Off-road vehicles off road I haven't got a problem with.

But around my area it's full of large 4x4's that are driven in and around the city / town, are washed and polished and have never seen a mud puddle let alone off road activity...stupidity, money wasting, poor purchasing decisions, massive compromise, etc, etc...but that's just my opinion...