My parents had Holdens brand new. I grew up with new HQ's and WB's and Holden powered Bedfords. My first cars were a HQ Belmont van and a HQ Deville. Had literally dozens upon dozens of Holdens since plus a few Toranas. And a Chev powered FJ40 'cruiser plus a Chev TH400 MQ Patrol ute, and a '57 Chev. Plus the Overlander 1-tonner. Newer stuff have been V2 Monaro (still have), VSIII ute, VY SS ute, VZ Cross8. I just traded the Cross8 in on a new 2010 SR5 Hilux. Yeah, not a GMH product but GMH don't make anything that will do the job of the Cross8 or Hilux. I even once owned an XF Falcon ex cab - cost bugger all and was cheap to run!
As for brand loyalty. Even if I was unbiased, I cannot think of any Ford made after the XA RPO83 that I'd own. They are all ugly rust buckets. I class the XB and XC Falcons as the ugliest cars ever built in Australia (love the XA though!). Modern stuff in 6cyl form are good things, better than 6cyl GMH equivalent. But who wants a 6cyl when you can have a V8 option and GMH have had the best (or only) V8's since the early 80's.
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put a Holley on, then took it off as still used a tonne of fuel....then when the baby was 5 days old the motor which we had just completely rebuilt had the valve stick open and hit the piston and a week later the other side went as well...the guy that did the heads had never seen that happen before, and re did them at no cost except we had to put it all back together. Once we had paid off the house we bought a brand new EB Falcon XR8 which was the first ford V8 in 10 years, cheaper to run, powerful, and a dream to drive, and never broke down....since then we have bought new xr8's and traded the old one about every 6 years....now we have a GT falcon. We dislike commodores although we had them for wedding cars, just never really got the go of them. We did however buy a cross 8 which was great for 4wheel driving, ute back for Rodney's work, fitted the kids in the back for holidays, and had a load of power, sounded great once we modified the exhaust. It did have transmission issues which was replaced under warranty. Sadly the middle east crises put an end to paying for all that fuel, so got a 6 cylinder ute...and I have a jeep, the GT is too nice to have for a daily, and I did suggest we sold it, but got shot down in flames. To sum it all up we loved our original sandman,it never gave an ounce of trouble, and have bought two to restore, and will drive them about once finished, we can see fix most problems with the motor, but after 1978 we have gorrn to the dark-side. 
I willl be wearing a Ford Shirt at Bathurst but might have to borrow one from Richard davidson coz I still love the good old holden.
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