One year ago, General Motors announced that it would be winding up the Holden brand in Australia and New Zealand which came as a shock to many dealerships and owners.
According to CarAdvice, it has obtained documents which have been verified by Holden insiders that the company made secret overtures to other manufacturers from as early as 2017 in a bid to keep the brand alive and the showrooms populated.
CarAdvice believes that GM approached Honda in early 2017 with a proposal to supply the Japanese brand with a rebodied Colorado ute to sell in its overseas channels, in exchange for Honda supplying a rebodied version of the Jazz for Holden to sell as a Barina.
However, the deal never came to fruition, and Honda has subsequently retired the Jazz model from Australia citing shrinking margins and sales volume.
According to CarAdvice, in early 2019 Holden proposed a partnership with SAIC Motor, with whom its parent company, General Motors, established a manufacturing joint venture with in 1998.
SAIC Motor (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation) is the state-owned parent company of LDV (known as Maxus in other markets) and MG Motor.
The proposal according to CarAdvice was that Holden would import rebadged versions of LDV ute, SUV, and Van product as well as rebadged versions of MG passenger car and SUV product. The plan allowed for suspension tuning at Holden’s Lang-Lang proving ground so that the Chinese-built vehicles would have the driving feel of a Holden according to an insider.
According to CarAdvice the plan meant that Holden showrooms would offer the Equinox and Acadia which were sourced from GM factories North America alongside the China-sourced vehicles and specialist vehicles such as the Silverado and Camaro which were remanufactured locally by HSV.
It says Holden’s sales forecast was for 60,000 GM-Holden vehicles, 18,000 for LDV sourced vehicles, 18,000 for MG Motor sourced vehicles and 2500 vehicles from HSV-supplied Chevrolet models.
However, as CarAdvice points out that forecast was somewhat optimistic. It says that Holden sold 43,000 vehicles in 2019, while in 2020 MG Motor sold more than 15,000 vehicles and LDV sold more than 9000 vehicles.
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