What Happened to Australia's Car?

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I do the research, writing, narration, art, and animation. Yes, it is very lonely

[Gonboo]

Looks like Japan was able to successful invade Australia after all.

[harrycheng]

And now, Holden is officially closing down

[Mr_Lo_]

The British car industry was huge and that went down the drain around the same time.
We still have some factories but they make foreign cars.
Only thing left from our own back garden is Rolls Royce, and that's probably owned by Germans or something...

[natxian]

A British man visits Australia. The border officer asks, "Do you have a criminal record?"

The British man replies, "I thought you didn't need one to get into Australia anymore."

[FeatureHistory]

Apologies for the wait.
Between taking a holiday and the hot summer finding every way to impede my work here's a Featurette I had been tinkering with over the months.
A longer video has already been in the work and shouldn't be too far away.

[ryanwaits]

More Australian content please! As a Texan who wont shut up about my home I love to hear more from people with a passion for theirs.

[Bilbo-qqei]

Another feature history video, and it's not been a year! We are lucky on this day

[SeoWoojin]

Just a correction, no Japanese brand car, low cost or premium was ever manufactured in Korea. This is because of a strong rivalry between Korea and Japan as the most developed and Industrialized in Asia. The market was dominated by Hyundai, Daewoo, and KIA, which were also primary competitors of Toyota at the time so it would not make sense for them to do that. Japanese cars were primarily manufactured overseas in Thailand, Philippines, and China which also was the manufacturing ground for Korean auto makers.

[stridertrigger]

To be honest, even as an American I'd love to get my mitts on something like a Holden Ute, especially the HQ generation, but I reckon those, especially the performance versions are out of my budget at the moment and likely the foreseeable future unfortunately

[MajesticDemonLord]

RIP Holdens - the V8s will never be the same.

[heidirichter]

I've owned a few falcons over the years, they were fantastic vehicles. A little thirsty for fuel, but reliable and so comfortable for long trips. Not the fastest, but the big 6 cylinders had so much torque they towed effortlessly, and even loaded up with people and luggage it performed well. It was truly a sad day when the last falcon rolled off the assembly line.

I never owned a Commodore, I was always a Ford man, partly because I knew people who worked at the Broady Ford plant, and partly because I preferred the design of the Falcon 6 over the Holden 6, and it's better torque output.

I have fond memories of going on long trips, my XF Falcon with LTD interior and 4 speed manual climbing hills without me needing to shift down out of 4th gear, that reliable 6 burbling away as it ate up the kilometers... Or later, my EF towing another car on a car trailer without any drama, again on a long trip... Built with pride, they certainly seemed to be, and I was proud to own them, and now wish I hadn't got rid of them... But hey, we were all young and dumb once upon a time, right?

[vashnoret]

Kind of prophetic. With GM closing Holden brand a couple of days later. Also would have been good to highlight Mitsubishi shutting down factory in Tonsley in 2007. That really started the downhill as they built the magna and 380 were larger cars. The small and SUV cars were starting to gain more momentum

[zach]

Wait so you guys don't just drive impractical gas guzzlers across the desert?

[Arthurzeiro]

Thank you Australia for the UTE, the unibody/monocoque pickup is the greatest car layout ever made. I've lived in New Zealand for a bit and the coolest cars there were the Australian made ones, I wish I could have brought a XR6 Turbo Ute back with me in my backpack.

Long live the Barra.

[andrewallen]

The large Holden production line machine tools are now in South Africa and having been set up and used properly are now achieving remarkably high quality production.

[MrChopsticks-xg]

“The sauce on the pie”
*COUGH COUGH*
HE HAS CORONA, DRINK!

[lukenewman]

I mean everyone loves the romance of domestic car manufacturing, but at the end of the day the industry was only propped up by taxpayer funded subsidies to private corporations.

[SupremeLeaderKimJong-un]

Australia needs some of our Pyeonghwa cars

[maxtyler]

He's back! I can't wait for the video on the Mormon Wars. The 1838 one, the Illinois one, and the Utah one. I'm not Mormon, but they're very interesting.

[MrLolxu]

Australia shafted their own industry tho and the stupid micromanagement of GM.

GM basically ruined Holden much like how they ruined Saab with their stupid rebadging habits and what-not.
Holden had the biggest slice of the pie in the 70s and 80s with cars like the Monaro, Torana, Kingswood and Commodore. Those are amazing stuff the Australians had and watching the A9X Torana cutting everything on Barthurst was superbly amazing even 40 odd years ago till now. However, once GM micromanages and used the rebadging system, the self-created element is gone and as you mentioned, everything else was nothing but a rebadged item which, lets be frank, are most junks. Items like the Zafira, Spark, Caprice, Calibra, Insignia, Cruze etc etc are all either Chevys, Opels, Daewoos or other sub branches within GM. Sure, GM reused Holdens into other things too like when they took the C8 Monaro as the Vauxhall Monaro but then again these Australian rebadge had such poor presentations in their exported country that GM basically tanked the sales of these cars and instantly declared that the Australian branches must fold due to "lack of financial posibilities" when its GM themselves fucking themselves over... Hard.

Ford had it better but still, their focus on "Australian cars for Australia" also saw them tanking their sales as even if they can make cars for Australia alone, they won't survive if they don't branch out and that's the problem with Ford AUS.