If Aussie large cars were $10K more

[csv8]

Express.."Oh if you do notice the Holden ads on television they are of the Redline, nothing else."and that gets punters into the showroom...they might not buy a Redline but something else..advertising works!!! Fords new Focus ad with drums ??????!!!!

[malazn mafia]

Originally Posted by csv8

Hows this for radical idea ? Holden and Ford amalgamate...Ford build the family car and Holden build the sports cars. Ford build the entry level, mid and top luxury model. Holden build the SV6,SS and Redline. Holden use the XR6 turbo in the SV6....would it work ?????

HSV Falcon, to be fair, HSV certainly did a better job of dressing up the commodore than FPV ever did the falcon. However, FPV had a much better donor car.. Wouldn't be surprised to see HSV or Walkingforsure doing mustangs soon.

[SumoDog68]

Originally Posted by csv8

The Calais V V8 wagon is only $55k drive away..Bargain!!!!

Funny you mention that as I test driven that very car in VF 6.0 as they didn't have 6.2 in stock yet . Disclaimer - I haven't really driven many Commodores in the past , not newer ones anyway.
Car is decently put together ( Dash inserts in light colour velour are questionable) , has got up to date technology ( head up display , blind spot warning ,decent sat Nav , heated seats etc. ) Felt a bit doughy off the line but it comes alive at higher speeds. Absorbs local bumpy roads really well considering it is sitting on 19's.
Decent seats ,space and wagon body shape is what I am after - not many cars around with this sort of performance / budget ratio.
I will wait until they receive VF2 version and try that . I can see myself buying one if I can get a decent deal.

[Express]

Originally Posted by csv8

Express.."Oh if you do notice the Holden ads on television they are of the Redline, nothing else."and that gets punters into the showroom...they might not buy a Redline but something else..advertising works!!! Fords new Focus ad with drums ??????!!!!

Yeah I have a basic understanding of how advertising works, so if you focus your mind back about 12 or even 6 months you’ll remember the Commodore ads invariably showed the range including Calais, Sportswagon & Ute.

So what’s changed?

Anyway I’m only repeating something that was said to me over dinner by someone whose opinion I respect and if nobody sees any value in what I’ve said then fair enough.

It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong and won’t be the last.

[Road_Warrior]

Originally Posted by csv8

Hows this for radical idea ? Holden and Ford amalgamate...Ford build the family car and Holden build the sports cars. Ford build the entry level, mid and top luxury model. Holden build the SV6,SS and Redline. Holden use the XR6 turbo in the SV6....would it work ?????

No, there's no money in sports sedans, the numbers are too few and the investment too high, the market wants SUVs and dual cab pickups.

Ford had a golden opportunity to spin off more variants of the Territory platform but I suspect internal pressure and politics prevented it from going any further.

Any future "Australian car" needs to be an SUV with multiple products able to be spun off from that.

[Dauphin]

I'm sure we could get used to the idea of merged manufacturing of our beloved red and blue. Better than nothing, and keeps people with these skills doing what they wanna do. Any suggestions for what the new brand name would be?

Edit: I came up with Southern Star Motors.

[malazn mafia]

Originally Posted by Dauphin

I'm sure we could get used to the idea of merged manufacturing of our beloved red and blue. Better than nothing, and keeps people with these skills doing what they wanna do. Any suggestions for what the new brand name would be?

Edit: I came up with Southern Star Motors.

Eureka Motors, Southern Cross Autos

[Road_Warrior]

Or perhaps...AMC...Australian Motor Corporation

[The Snout]

So many industries have been affected by the changes in the manufacturing cost over the last few decades.

Even buying a men's suit, when once they were made in Australia by a tailor, that business now had to send it's equipment overseas and set up a new factory in Asia. They measure you here manufacturer over there.

If you unlock the ability to continue manufacturing cars in Australia without turning the place into a Soviet Union everyone buys a Lada setup, then you will have worked out how to bring other industries back as well. Better men than me are failing at that one.

Someone posted a good quote the other day, went something like 'when the winds of change happen, some people build walls other build windmills.'

[mcflux]

An interesting post, I thought I'd break it up to reply to specific parts:

Originally Posted by Big Damo

Maybe the other option could have been ship off the tooling to Thailand and have them build the Falcon for us, drop its price so an entry level model is $29,990 drive away?

Obviously we still design it locally but Thailand could build it for us?

The Ranger is a big success story for Ford AU using this approach. But for the Falcon, it was born with an Australian pedigree if you like, a Thai-built "Aussie" car might not cut it with their target audience. Also it doesn't address the problem of all the Aussie workers put out of work, save for the design team. This would turn the Falcon into one more import battling against all the other imports.

I think the state governments should have been smarter, maybe subsidized the cost of registration (or no cost for them?) or remove taxes on Australian made cars at sale?

The former point already applies to Hybrid & E-vehicles, although I haven't seen this loudly advertised to car-buyers. The latter point would be quite effective on those who look at the sales price of a vehicle.

To go against the grain though, I've purchased a new vehicle which was slightly more expensive at point-of-sale vs a competitor, but the after-sales costs (capped servicing etc) was waaay under the competitor.

Might have been a better option then give the manufacturers money for silly things like the Ecoboost Falcon?

It is unfortunate that Ford's venture into side projects such as Ecoboost went pretty much unheralded. Their EcoLPI model in particular should have been marketed far more.

$40,000,000 buys you a lot of free registrations.

I wonder what would be more attractive to the customer? Free/reduced rego, free fuel, $ off sale, $ off stamp duty... Would make for an interesting marketing exercise.

There needed to be more incentives for people to buy locally, its too late now essentially I'm just the dude playing the music on the titanic.

Society moved on, whether it was due to the media, our carbuilders, social tastes, whatever, the iceberg was struck years ago. Too bad the binoculars were locked away & the $500M lifeboats were stripped from the ship.

[Spammy]

Would any of these ideas have saved fax machines, video recorders, black & white TV or any other product that had reached the end of its life??

[Sprintey]

Originally Posted by SumoDog68

Funny you mention that as I test driven that very car in VF 6.0 as they didn't have 6.2 in stock yet . Disclaimer - I haven't really driven many Commodores in the past , not newer ones anyway.
Car is decently put together ( Dash inserts in light colour velour are questionable) , has got up to date technology ( head up display , blind spot warning ,decent sat Nav , heated seats etc. ) Felt a bit doughy off the line but it comes alive at higher speeds. Absorbs local bumpy roads really well considering it is sitting on 19's.
Decent seats ,space and wagon body shape is what I am after - not many cars around with this sort of performance / budget ratio.
I will wait until they receive VF2 version and try that . I can see myself buying one if I can get a decent deal.

Yep, one last roll of the dice. Of all cars on sale, RWD V8 Aussie wagon (in high spec) has most appeal to me before the electric age. That Holden put effort into VF & VF2 makes it all the better. The amount of times I've looked at the old AU V8 Fairmont wagons ruefully, saying to myself "that was the last fully marketed Falcon wagon with V8,"... well, right now is the same for the last of all Aussie V8 wagons.

Similar for the last of the V8 manual coupe utilities.