The future for Holden manufacturing in Australia is looking a little brighter following workers voting to accept changes to their enterprise bargaining agreement. The changes include a pay freeze and additional workforce flexbiltiy for the company.
With the arrival of the Internet, dealerships had quite reasonably expected to reduce costs by utilising the services made available over the Internet. Unfortunately this is blatantly not the case.
The Brian Hilton Motor Group has acquired the Central Coast Honda dealership at north Gosford from Central Coast Holden. The Honda dealership will now join the group which already has three other locations on the central coast with Toyota, Renault, Kia and Ssangyong franchises.
With the recent announcement of changes to the FBT rules by the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, the government also announced that they would undertake a 'Buy Australian made car policy.' The prime minister stated that this policy should increase overall sales of locally-made cars by approximately 18,000 units.Some facts: * Locally-made vehicles now account for just 9% of overall vehicle sales.* The sale of locally-made vehicles are now at the lowest percentage of sales ever.* The sales to all government departments, local, state and federal, has dropped by 26% since 2008 while the new vehicle market grew by 9%.The FCAI states that in 2012 local, federal and state government departments purchased 51,000 vehicles, of which about 16,000 vehicles were locally-made, and 19,500 in the first six months in 2013.
A national program that has halved the number of crashes for P plate drivers is set to close as both the Government and Coalition fail to commit necessary funding.Ben Haythorpe, Royal Automobile Association of South Australia's senior manager, community education, says the successful driver education program, keys2drive, will be shut down later this year when the current funds expire.“keys2drive has delivered more than 190,000 free driving lessons to learner drivers and their parent’s right across the country.
Melbourne’s inner-north is set to become a key testing ground for widespread electric vehicle (EV) use in Victoria, with the launch of an electric vehicle hub that includes one of Victoria’s first fast-charging stations and an EV for public hire.Minister for public transport and roads, Terry Mulder, says that the Victorian coalition government, through the electric vehicle trial, has invested nearly $50,000 in the creation of Moreland City council’s new electric vehicle hub, located in Coburg.“The government recognises the long-term benefits that EVs will provide for our transport system and the environment,” says Mulder.
The new Holden Trax, Peugeot 208 and Citroen DS5 have all achieved top 5-star ANCAP safety ratings, performing well across each of the five physical ANCAP tests.5-star safety ratings apply to all variants of the Trax and DS5.
Yelp is a new-to-Australia website, on which customers can share their experiences in dealing with dealerships – both good, bad and downright damning.
Four Sydney motor dealers and one auto-dismantler have been raided by NSW Fair Trading, the NSW Police and Roads & Maritime Services.Fair Trading assistant commissioner Philip Flogel says the businesses - in Homebush, Kings Park, Fairfield East, Concord and Greenacre - had vehicles and business records scrutinised in response to numerous consumer complaints.“Fair Trading investigators found numerous breaches of the Motor Dealers Act including a lack of paperwork on certain vehicles,” says Flogel.
In further worrying news for the dealers, on the back of changes to FBT, the consumer confidence rating has fallen sharply to 112.5 (down 5.6pts in a week since July 27/28, 2013), according to the latest Roy Morgan poll.The large fall is the result of a decrease in confidence about all components of the survey except personal financial situations, compared to this time last year.The change follows treasurer Chris Bowen’s announcement last Friday that the federal budget deficit has blown out from a projected $18 billion to over $30 billion in only ten weeks.