Thread: Death Of The Australian Motoring Industry

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

We had them as company cars at Leyland Truck and Bus. The only model that was worth a knob of goat**** was the V8 with 4 speed manual trans. The six was a dog. The V8 was a mismatch to the auto trans it was blighted with. The big boot was an advertising feature. The publicity stunt of putting a 44 gallon in there was ridiculous. Who carries empty 44's around in their boot? If the drum was full, the bum would have dragged on the ground. We got the rejects that were too badly finished to sell to a dealer. Gaps in the body panels you could stick your fingers through. Don't **** in my pocket about the old legend of Monday and Friday cars. It took several days to pass a vehicle through the build process.

Disco Man, there was not a four cylinder in the line-up.

Gotta admit the V8 4 speed was the pick of the bunch but the auto wasn't that bad. The wife happily put 400,000km on her Super auto V8 before it got retired. Mind you the last P76 I drove as a daily got a GM TH700 4 speed auto which is an excellent match for the V8 engine. Lockup 4th with a 2.92 diff at 110km/h didn't phase it at all. And all the P76's I ever had all got h/d springs in the back, then a 1/4 ton boot load wasn't a problem...

Oh and Disco Man, the 4-6-8 engine option was first seen in Australia with the LH Torana, then discontinued after the VH Commodore.

Originally Posted by Dougal

You lot can talk about subsidies all you like. I had a falcon xr6 for a rental a few weeks ago. Never have I seen a car so big with a boot so small.
Given the choice we would have taken a mondeo or camry every time.

There is your basic problem. The product was completely out of touch.

And therein lay the problem.

Wasn't it Rangieman that worked at Holden for years until about eighteen months ago ?

I seem to recall him saying that sales and engineering here wanted a diesel in the Commodore for years but Detroit wouldn't approve it.

And that happened with most of the line, Detroit dictated what was to be produced far more than people realise, and so often it wasn't what the market wanted, so it could be argued the death of local manufacturing was as much or more a management problem as any other single reason.

Originally Posted by rick130

And therein lay the problem.

....
I seem to recall him saying that sales and engineering here wanted a diesel in the Commodore for years but Detroit wouldn't approve it.

And that happened with most of the line, Detroit dictated what was to be produced far more than people realise, and so often it wasn't what the market wanted, so it could be argued the death of local manufacturing was as much or more a management problem as any other single reason.

As I commented much earlier in this thread, perhaps the major, fundamental problem with Australian car manufacture is that there has never been a successful Australian car manufacturer. This means that in all cases decisions such as 'what to build', or whether to export and where, have generally been made somewhere else. Examples include the influence of Leyland influencing decisions in Leyland Australia, restrictions on Ford and Holden exports etc, but perhaps the most telling as to how basic this is, was the way that General Motors removed L. Hartnett as head of GMH in 1947 because his outlook was 'too Australian'.

As to why there has never been a successful Australian manufacturer - Australians in general have never supported successful businesses or people; generally known as the tall poppy syndrome, and governments of all stripes, certainly from Chiffley to Hawke, perhaps a little less so since, have structured motor industry assistance and regulations to favour the multinationals in preference to any would-be upstart locals.

And today, worldwide regulations and red tape make it so expensive to set up to make a car that it is impossible for any except the very largest companies to even contemplate it. And it needs to be borne in mind that probably at any time in the last thirty (or even forty) years there are unlikely to be more than two or three car manufacturers worldwide actually operating at a profit - even with subsidies and protection! For that matter, if you look at the history of the motor industry worldwide, the principal result of most manufacturers has been to destroy shareholders' (and often lenders') capital! The manufacturers who have been really successful have not been the ones that do what everyone else does, but (a very few of) the ones that do something new.

John

Originally Posted by disco man

I could be wrong but i think the P76 was the only car at that time that could be optioned with 3 engines 4,6,8, cylinder. Targa Flario models have gone for decent many lately.

And the article in a round about way was saying that the Government did not want the P76 or Leyland?

Was looking at this one a couple of weeks ago at a car show just around the corner from where I'm staying in Perth. Very nice example of the V8.

I almost bought a 6 cylinder one a few years back. From what I've since heard, glad I didn't. Bought a VC Valiant V8 instead.

I've never heard of these being offered with a 4 cylinder engine ................

Originally Posted by PAT303

When it comes down to it I'm fed up with people in Australia whinging about cheap imports,people like Jerry Harvey,he wants imports taxed so he can continue to rip us off.I'm still waiting for someone to explain how I can buy parts from the UK for a tenth of what we pay here,how the hell can we make a diff lock in Melbourne,ship it to America,buy it,ship it back to Australia cheaper than buying it here?,how does that work?. Pat

It's very simple Pat. The price you sell things for is determined by your turnover and your fixed overheads. If your turnover is significantly higher then you can drop your selling price and still cover the overheads. If the Australian stores sold diff locks at the same price as the US stores they wouldn't cover overheads and would have to close down. People buying them online just increases the turnover of the US stores and keeps the price higher here.

Originally Posted by BMKal

Was looking at this one a couple of weeks ago at a car show just around the corner from where I'm staying in Perth. Very nice example of the V8.

I almost bought a 6 cylinder one a few years back. From what I've since heard, glad I didn't. Bought a VC Valiant V8 instead.

I've never heard of these being offered with a 4 cylinder engine ................

My mistake in mentioning the 4 cylinder there never was one.Sorry guys.
But the P76 in the pictures looks very nice.

Originally Posted by mikehzz

It's very simple Pat. The price you sell things for is determined by your turnover and your fixed overheads. If your turnover is significantly higher then you can drop your selling price and still cover the overheads. If the Australian stores sold diff locks at the same price as the US stores they wouldn't cover overheads and would have to close down. People buying them online just increases the turnover of the US stores and keeps the price higher here.

Plus the Yanks often get paid much less than what an Australian does for the same job, plus real estate prices here are some of the most expensive in the world. As I said earlier you can't have it both ways, high local wages and cheaply sold goods locally, add in economy of scale advantage that the US and most large Euro country's have and that is why the same item that is made in Australia costs less to reimport from America than buy here.

Plus add in transport costs, Australia is the sixth largest country in the world, it has approximately 0.035% of the worlds population living within its borders and out of 242 countries listed it has a population density that sees it ranked at 234, only countries like the Falklands Islands, Pitcairn Island and Western Sahara, Mongolia and Namibia have less people living in them per sq kilometre of land mass. Meaning there is stuff all people living here and as we all know they live all over the place not just in one tiny corner that is why it costs so much to transport stuff around the country, no economy of scale and main population centres far away from each other.

Add in high Australian taxes compared to many western countries again because of a small population base and again because of high infrastructure costs because of the size of the place and it all adds up.

Every time you buy something OS via the Internet you lessen the profitability and turn over of local retail suppliers here and that means they have to try and increase margins to cover the lost volume of sales which forces prices up even more and by all means that is your choice, no one is saying you shouldn't, but maybe consider a few of these things before complaining about local retailers.

Do you get it now Pat?

Originally Posted by rangie ute on 38''

I must admit, I'm sick of hearing Australians cry poor, we earn good wages and have good lifestyles on a whole and can afford our Australian products, people will end up with better products instead of Chinese crap and if they cost more then they might look after them more and not use the Oww well its a 10 k chery il throw it away and buy another one next year attitude. Australians can afford aussie products but the cheap carrot dangling infront of them is convincing them otherwise

As for government subsidies being a leech to tax payers, you must live in a box,
You watch qantas become our next home grown company go down unless they receive government assistance, because u can bet your bottom dollar the other international airline's are heavily subsides by their government and are out competing us,
You must stop believing that subsidising is automatically a loss to our economy

Never assume most people can afford the Australian product, I would hazard a guess people buy the cheaper import, because that's all they can afford, if you're living in the western suburbs of Sydney (as an excample) paying a morgage, single income, couple of kids and commuting to work because the trains are just not viable(ie) 2 trains and a bus or visa versa) why would you buy a Falcon or commodore to commute, common sense tells you a cheap economical Chinese/Koreon car would make more sense.

Not everyone can afford a $40,000 car, if we didn't have a dual income, no way I could afford what we have, the average wage is $57k a year, I earn $53k.

IMHO

The Australian car industry, is it's own worst enemy, show me a cheap economical small Australian car, even Holden and Ford relied on imports to fill that gap, I'm pretty sure the parent companies of Ford and GM-H just couldn't justify the costs of having these plants in Australia, wouldn't supprise me if we get the Holden Commodore back as a Pontiac imported from the States

Baz.