GM are getting right out of OZ altogether. Absolutely disgraceful given they were sucking on the taxpayer's tit for decades. I hope people have a long memory if they decide to come back at some point. I know that I would not buy a GM product in a fit given this bastardry.

boab wrote:

---

its a sad day most likely due to free trade and lack of tariffs we have lost almost all our manufacturing and all our vehicle manufacturing

---

Not to mention our ports and farms!!

Dick. 

What Holden should have sold!

Maybe Japan will stop making cars for the wrong side of the road as they are the same side as us. There goes all your Toyotas!

Nissan " Juke" made in UK, sold here rhd. Daughter just bought one named " daisy"

It is really sad to see another Australian icon gone, so who is ultimately to blame , past governments who opened the flood gates & allowed the market to be

flooded with imports & reap the benefits of tariffs.

Holden took pride in being built buy Australians for Australians , but with the competition of around 70 other brands now, & our relative small population &

they really only exported in very small numbers, clearly cost prohibitive to continue.

We couldnt fit this one in the motorhome when we left.

I've read a few comments about Australia joining the 'rest' of the world and changing to left hand drive. Just think about that for a minute!!!!! .................. Minutes up.
Is right hand drive that rare? Just to name a few countries. Australia. NZ. UK. Japan. South Africa and other African countries. Oh yeah and don't forget India. Thailand. Malaysia. Heck of a lot of other SE Asia countries as well. So don't tell me there isn't a market for right hand drive vehicles. If GM wanted to they could build a cheap car in Australia for the India market. Even capturing 1% of the India market would be a worthwhile exercise. No it's a simple fact that the taxpayers money has dried up and they decide to pack their bags.
So think not about those are on the other side of the road but those who are on the right side of the road. Or should that be the left side of the road. Now I'm confusing myself!!

Mike the market at the moment may be 75% LHD. But it would be hard to ignore a country such as India. I wouldn't mind a 25% share in that market!

Indian made cars sell for as low as US2K. 

& the other end of the spectrum, Land Rover!

Driving of the left side of the road is very slightly safer.

Quite a few countries rail network is on the left track.

I liked Holdens, and I owned a few. But here's the thing, it was NEVER Australian, not really. GM owned it, and although Detroit listened to Aussie engineers and market research people SOMETIMES, what GM office decreed, Holden had to do. Because GM is world-wide, it also made the Holden brand difficult to export competitively, because each country has a GM "local" brand. Vauxhall was taken over by GM for example, in the UK.
And as many others have noted, Aussie governments of all flavoured poured billions into Holden and other car manufactures] . We would have been much better off buying it outright, and really owning the brand. Holden was no more Australian than Toyota or Ford, despite local production.
So a lot of jobs were lost, and market opportunities squandered. But it is typical of Oz. We don't value add or diversify much. So now when the USA says jump, we say "how high". And the PRC [China], our major trading partner, can shut us down any time they please.
This is NOT for want of talent, but most gets sucked away overseas, and we just sell wheat, and sheep and iron ore, and a bit of tourism and education. Well, a bit more, but not much. The USA is smart, it made a point of owning the vast bulk of all patents and other IP. So like us, they don't value-add, because other countries build stuff under licence from them, and they sit back and enjoy the profits.
Well, so much for market forces. Fine in theory, but not if the rules are slanted against the "little guy". Australian governments [of all flavours] are too into ideology, and not enough into doing what works. So business and workers are always fighting each other, because the right imports Harvard business school "business is war" fanatics/ predators and the left, militant unions.
The result is that we are a client state, happy to go to war with LBJ, and get us into evil quagmires like the Vietnam war. Because someone determined, a hundred years ago, that we could not defend ourselves. That is nonsense, we were able to raise and maintain 5 army divisions for the French campaign alone, and produced a brilliant general, [Monash] who showed Europeans how to fight a successful, cheap war. That was when we had five millions in population. We had an army of over 416,000, and 334,000 served overseas. Now we can barely maintain 6 infantry battalions of about 650 soldiers each, plus some supporting arms.
Well, sorry for the rant, but the debacle of Holden and other companies shows that our leaders are all too willing to act in the interests of everyone else, governments, and multinationals, and not for us. Our companies, our workers.

A great post RJ65.

......................
With close relation to the above topic I copied this information from another social media source.

Considering many of the vehicles we drive fall into this category, I am really now interested as to wether our leaders will remove this tax on new vehicle purchases. I personally wont be holding my breath.

As posted elsewhere.

LUXURY CAR TAX : WHY NOT A 'LUXURY HAND-BAG TAX' OR A 'LUXURY SHOE TAX' AS WELL ?

We currently have a 'luxury car tax' in Australia which is an additional tax of 33% of the retail sale price of a car above $67,525 (GST inclusive).

For example, if you buy a car for $97,525 ($88,659 + 10% GST $8,866 = $97,525) as the retail value of the car is $30,000 above the luxury car tax threshold ($67,525) you pay and additional luxury car tax of (33% x $30,000) $10,000.

So all up, on you $97,525 car purchase - you pay $8,866 in GST + $10,000 in luxury car tax = Total tax of $18,866.

This tax was originally put in place to help protect Holden, however with Holden now gone the economic argument for a luxury car tax is about as strong as the economic argument for a 'luxury hand bag tax' or a 'luxury shoe tax' or maybe even a 'luxury iPhone tax'.

And although it's unlikely most of us will ever pay $97,000 for a car, lowering the luxury car tax should also help lower the value of second hand cars.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/economics/liberal-mps-call-for-luxury-car-tax-to-be-scrapped-following-holdens-demise/news-story/a776f4c60af4073bcb97677ef940532b

( Removed the political statements in this paragraph )

The tax on imported vehicles raised some $675m in 2018-19, and this is expected to rise to $750m by 2022-23. Meanwhile, Motor Trades Association of Australia CEO Richard Dudley describes it as an unconscionable tax that should have been scrapped when local car manufacturing ceased in 2017:

End Post.

Regards

Angie

bentaxlebabe wrote:

---

A great post RJ65.

......................

We currently have a 'luxury car tax' in Australia which is an additional tax of 33% of the retail sale price of a car above $67,525 (GST inclusive).

For example, if you buy a car for $97,525 ($88,659 + 10% GST $8,866 = $97,525) as the retail value of the car is $30,000 above the luxury car tax threshold ($67,525) you pay and additional luxury car tax of (33% x $30,000) $10,000.

So all up, on you $97,525 car purchase - you pay $8,866 in GST + $10,000 in luxury car tax = Total tax of $18,866.

End Post.

Regards

Angie

---

 Angie, in 2015 I was about to buy a new LC 200 and going through the price with the salesman we had on a $84,000 vehicle:

GST..................$7,636

Luxury tax.........$6,000 approx

Stamp duty... ....$5,500

I said that was $19,100 of tax, to which he replied the dealer also paid an import tax of around $1,500.

So the government gets $21 k out of a new car then (2015), plus petrol tax, liquor tax etc etc..............

Cheers Bob

-- Edited by Bobdown on Thursday 20th of February 2020 08:21:46 PM

It is disturbing when you add up all those taxes.
We bought our Toyota in 2014 and from memory it cost $84000 approximately. It would have been nice not to have to pay such outrageous taxes. I would have liked the $20,000 in our pocket.
It would be a lot worse had we bought a Ram like Rob wanted.

Yes Possom I agree, there are never any taxes repealed in good faith from any government ever.

Regards

Angie