This is a bit of a topic with me of late, I'm gonna have a rave (you dont have to read it! - lol).
The current Federal government is commited to suporting local car manufacturing, and this is hugely important in my opinion. Australia needs this expertise, we need the factories and the manufacturing ability, and we need the employment and skills training that go with them. There are many reasons for this.
A few years ago I came across a rusty old steel case about 3 and a half foot long, 8 inches or so wide and tall, with the mark 'Holden' pressed into it, (hinged lid, strongly built, but showing years of deterioration due to exposure to the weather). The bloke who had it reckoned it was a gun case from WWII. Wondering if Holden had ever been commandeered to make arms, I phoned Holden and asked. The answer; no. Holden did not make the weapon it probably housed, but they did make a variety of different amourment cases for Australian Defence Forces to transport weapons and ammunition during WWII, heaps and heaps of them apparantly. It would have been an important role for an Australian manufacturer to provide safe housings for such things to ADR requirements. Its the sort of immediate large scale manufactuing Australia needs to be able to do for itself, by itself, and fairly quickly if we need it. While, its pehaps true that a hinged steel box may not seem like much, what happens, if you really need hundreds and hundreds of them, quickly, and cant rely on transport routes from overseas? And of course, Holden and Ford(Aust) didn't even build engines back in those days, whereas they do now - and reliably, which is much more useful.
It is also worthwhile to look at the expertise that moved into aviation manufacture from the auto industry (as well as other manufacturing industries) to rebuild the second hand, (non-airworthy) Beaufighters the Americans provided, and which Australians rebuilt here and sent to the pacific war against Japan over PNG.
But that doesnt mean I'm saying cars have to be about defence, or war! But that mechanical manufacturing ability is a useful thing to have, just in case. Its imperetive really. It provides the nation with trained, skilled workers that may be in demand for public infrastructure projects at any stage.
Australia needs a strong mechanical manufacturing ability, and we have one, I reckon a salient point in this is that the Australian people have contributed to paying for a percentage of this ability over many years now and it would surely be shamefully wasteful to allow that public investment go to waste.
Another point is that for the money the government (the public) puts into auto manufacturing in Australia, there is a real return! The auto industry not only employs many, and is on average over the decades, profitable to itself, it also provides export dollars. It also supports employment and innovation in all the small local component manufacturers. Its a huge part of the economy. Sure Mazdas are cheap at the moment, as are BMW, Merc and just about anything that is not built here - wait till the dollar drops, (and it will at some point) what then? We all drive Kias?
A friend/ work colleague of mine (early 20's - used to be a bit of a Holden fan) made the comment to me only yesterday that 'If Holden built the cars Australians wanted, then more Australians would buy them' - this phrase has been used alot in the media of late. It didnt seem to dawn on him when I pointed out that Commodore had only just dopped out of the top ten a week or so ago, how many Australians are still buying them, - it's still alot of units. I further pointed out that car buying trends change fast, particularly lately in Australia, with petrol price changes, the value of the dollar, the cheap price of imports, the huge silver star on the front of the relatively cheap (but pretty gutless) bottom line Merc, and that a local car manufacturer shouldn't be held out by the motoring public for not completely re-gearing every two months over what is currently mostly political debate and correctness over fossile fuel use, carbon priceing, registration costs and so on which have fluctuated uncertainly over very short periods. However, my words fell on sadly deaf ears. (Insert Big Grin here.)
The trend at the moment from the pious 'enviro concious' and 'clever' motorists of this immediate period is to have a bash at local manufacturers. It's seemingly the in thing unfortunately. Please dont get me wrong, I am a committed environmentalist, I believe in a need to reduce Co2 emmissions, its just that for me, the amount of Co2 produced by the domestic fleet of Autralian passenger cars is so so very very small compared to global Co2 emmissions as to be difficult to even measure.... acurately anyway, and so reducing this very small amount by 5% or even 20% is such a thankless task for the result, compared (for instance) to whingeing about something better, like investing in solar hot water systems for every household in Australia - for instance.... and often the discussion on cars does come down to (often misplaced) environmental dialogue.
Perhaps also there has come the end, or pause, on an old Australian dream; the want to own a car that will let you attach a caravan, pack in the whole family with whatever gear they want, and drive to the otherside of the Nullarbor for the great once in a lifetime camping holiday, even if you never actually crossed the desert, you still bought a family car that would let you if you decided to. (I spose its cheaper to fly these days.)
But even if this is so, it wont change everything - you can't tow a horsefloat with a Golf Gti.
It seems to me that there is a cut the tall poppies down trend going on from local car buyers, and an idea that manufacturing a V8 is an irresponsible thing to do.... (except of course if its a Mercedes).
I reckon that in seven years or so, when most of the people who are currently buying the 'flash' bottom end Euopean cars, the Peugeots, BMs, Citroens, Mercs, Renaults etc get to the point that their car now needs some spare parts, and the dollar has dropped, and the parts are pricey, they will want to sell em quick, and then they'll consider switching back to locally manufactured cars, lets hope they still can.
I also reckon we could just be observing a temporary market glitch, becuase the idea that Holden and Ford dont build cars Australians want is pretty silly to me really, between the two of them (and not discounting Toyota/Nissan/Mitsub and others at all) they have provided exactly what Australians wanted for the last 50 years. Maybe the current time period could prove a similar time to the petrol crisis of the late 70s early 80s, in the end, despite predictions, we are all driving bigger, faster cars.... Maybe Holden should wheel out the VB Commodore again, see how it goes against Cruize - lol lol lol.
I was working on an imported car today (1995 Ford/Mazda Econovan) and it struck me (just after I bounced my head for the third time on the annoyingly placed internal mudflap arrangement), that I had to remember that these cars were designed to last 20 years and then die, they are not engineered to be easy to work on, (changing the lower drivers door hinge last week was a serious arse of a job!). Perhaps, many of the people who prefer to join the popular trend of buying a small effective economical 'enviro friendly' car to get them from A to B are not the sort that will actually ever take a spanner to the thing, and dont understand that when the starter motor wears out that the car is not actually dead yet. The carbon emmissions from smelting it etc where am I going here? more beer! (gulp).
The carbon emissions from smelting a small car with a 7 to 12 year lifespan do not nessecarily outweigh its saving in carbon emmission from being a decent fuel miser over its life.
OK outa beer now. Rave on!
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