Did GM know it would kill Holden in early 2019?

Tuesday, 25 February 2020

Holden collector Mark Grey has made peace with the brand's demise, but it's still 'sad'.

General Motors' decision to retire the Holden badge was made as far back as the first half of 2019, CarAdvice reports.

However, even the most senior Holden executives in Australia weren't told of the plans until just before they went public.

The Australian publication cites 'confidential sources,' who said that GM began negotiations to sell the Thailand factory responsible for manufacturing the Colorado ute to Great Wall Motors around four months ago.

It looks like General Motors had made the decision to axe Holden in early 2019.

'Deals like that don't happen overnight,' the source told CarAdvice. 'Talks of the sale began at least four months ago, so you can comfortably deduce from that, GM knew at least at that time the days were numbered for Holden. They were getting rid of the Thailand factory that was supposed to be Holden's lifeline.'

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GM's official word is that the Holden decision was made 'recently' after 2019's record low sales numbers. Back in 2017, the American carmaker said it intended to turn the company around, investing huge amounts in bringing Holden's emissions laboratory up to world standards and creating the Lang Lang testing grounds.

Now it seems that Holden was doomed from early 2019, before its disastrous sales year would unfold in full, largely due to the poor reception the ZB Commodore garnered.

According to CarAdvice, an impressive line-up of future models was ditched and senior managers at Holden who were responsible for future model programmes left and were not replaced, all in the first half of 2019.

Dave Buttner, who was brought out of retirement to lead Holden in 2018, left just as quickly as he arrived, citing personal reasons. It now looks like he left shortly after GM began talks to sell the Thailand factory to Great Wall.

'General Motors has had a lot of practice exiting unprofitable markets in the last few years, so this is not new to them, but this is unprecedented in Australia, to shut down a network the size of Holden,' CarAdvice's industry insider said.