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| GM walking away from Australia |
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| vk6zgo:
--- Quote from: Kerlin on February 18, 2020, 05:31:03 am ---Not pessimistic, its true. Not long ago bought brand new car designed and made in Australia. The Australian version had the independent suspension removed. Steering and suspension were replaced with cheaper versions. Three friends who have one have had the dash melt in the sun, so I fitted a dash protection mat. Has a very cheap crappy interior that won't last long. The window rubbers are already rotting. Here's a great one for us electronics people - Then there is the electronic display panel, takes 15 seconds to show any image. Also when changing to reverse the reversing camera takes 10 seconds to show an image. On the radio station display shows the radio as being on two stations one corresponds with the steering wheel controls and the other with the radio controls. My guess is there was a problem integrating it with a local display, so they just left it like that! It was sold brand new with DAB when all the DAB stations had already gone off air, just left it like that, even though they knew the problem. --- End quote --- If you were sold a DAB radio, you got done! Australia uses the later, incompatible DAB+ system, & AFAIK there were never any plain DAB transmissions. --- Quote --- The screen cannot be seen even in moderate sunlight. I am waiting to see what else goes wrong, I won't be disappointed. The Japanese version of this car is now available and it is far far superior. And don't forget it was subsidised by the tax payer. Good riddance to our local manufacturers! --- End quote --- |
| Kjelt:
They sold Opel (Vauxhall) to PSA last year. It is a smart move for them IMO, they need to focus on the EV transition and focus on the business parts that make money and territories where they win. You see it going on everywhere now, mergers even with small carshops here in the Netherlands are merged into larger dealerships. When EV transition is growing we will not see that many "different" cars, each manufacturer will have three perhaps four platforms and that is it. On the four platforms there will be the choice but as I read an article today the hardware is no longer going to be the differentiator it is going to be the software and that is where these manufacturers have 0 skills and 0 people. So they need to transit from HW manufacturer to also SW company because it will take too many people to outsource that and be dependent on your income of another company. Just my two cents. |
| I wanted a rude username:
"For $35 billion over two decades, Australia rented jobs from international car companies in exchange for subsidies which they were expert at milking from governments around the world. ... As soon as the subsidies dried up, so did the cars." |
| coppice:
--- Quote from: I wanted a rude username on February 18, 2020, 04:54:59 am ---This is bigger than just Australia: GM plans to entirely stop manufacturing right-hand drive passenger cars, for all markets. (They might do a few speciality conversions, but those will be effectively aftermarket.) Shows what a tough situation they are in financially. --- End quote --- The only right hand drive countries where GM ever had any traction were the UK, Australia, and a scattering of sales in the Middle East. They never had any traction in Japan, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and so on. They sold off their entire European operations, so they are out of the UK market. Recently they've been making right hand drive cars just for Australia. Making cars for just one market that isn't so very big is tough. Once upon a time making right and left hand driver versions of a car didn't add much to the engineering, Now you need to tool up an entire front interior. If you don't have the sales volume to effectively spread the NRE for that, you might as well not sell at all. |
| Ed.Kloonk:
--- Quote from: coppice on February 19, 2020, 03:28:51 am --- --- Quote from: I wanted a rude username on February 18, 2020, 04:54:59 am ---This is bigger than just Australia: GM plans to entirely stop manufacturing right-hand drive passenger cars, for all markets. (They might do a few speciality conversions, but those will be effectively aftermarket.) Shows what a tough situation they are in financially. --- End quote --- The only right hand drive countries where GM ever had any traction were the UK, Australia, and a scattering of sales in the Middle East. They never had any traction in Japan, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and so on. They sold off their entire European operations, so they are out of the UK market. Recently they've been making right hand drive cars just for Australia. Making cars for just one market that isn't so very big is tough. Once upon a time making right and left hand driver versions of a car didn't add much to the engineering, Now you need to tool up an entire front interior. If you don't have the sales volume to effectively spread the NRE for that, you might as well not sell at all. --- End quote --- We made a left hand drive car for America here, in oz. Doug DeMuro reviewed it. |
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