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Commodore and Falcon decline tells the real story

Commodore and Falcon sales over last 30 years

As the fallout and childish finger pointing from politicians tries to pin the blame for the decision from Ford and now Holden to stop making cars in Australia, this graph from News Limited, first published in January, tells us all we need to know.

Yes, the graph stops at the end of 2012 and so doesn’t include increasing sales of the new VF Commodore, but c’mon, does anyone really expect the VF to reach the peak of 90,000+ annual sales from the late 1990s?

If you don’t like the graph, Autocar has summed up the sales woes of the Commodore in words:

Holden’s failure to sell enough cars in its home market is its ultimate downfall. In 2002, Holden sold 80,000 Commodores (its staple large saloon, built locally). Last year it sold just 30,000. With a break-even figure of 40,000, this has been a long time coming.

Of course issues such as union-backed wage increases, the high Australian dollar, increasing fuel prices, the rise and rise of SUVs and other factors have all influenced the purchasing decisions of Australians in recent years.

Whatever you believe to be the cause, the effect of dramatically declining sales for the Commodore and Falcon paints the true picture. Couple that with a new car sales market in Australia that is otherwise quite healthy and the decision for the two US auto giants to abandon ship was a bit of a no-brainer.

It still sucks, though.

[Source: News Ltd]

2 replies on “Commodore and Falcon decline tells the real story”

Thanks for the interesting article and graph. I’d be interested in seeing Camry sales on that graph also. Further, with the ‘up-and-up’ of SUV sales, how does Territory fit on that graph? What about Cruze? Local manufacturing by Holden and Ford isn’t as dour as just Commodore and Falcon sale figures…

That’s a good point James.

Certainly Holden made an attempt to address market forces by building the Cruze. I still can’t understand why Ford didn’t get local production for the Focus over the line.

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