LeeM Posted 18February, 2020 Report Share Posted 18February, 2020 @Raven The Supercar mob have flatly opposed the GT4 concept for years, yet I'm sure they're now looking at it. Supercars has been a joke since they went to the 'Cars of the future' concept which I believe Skaife had afinancial interest in bringing to fruition. If they'd kept on using the base Holden and Ford chassis', they'd have a lot more credibility with regards to the Ford v Holden rivalry. As I mentioned, there is NOTHING Holden Commodore, or Ford Mustang about the current Supercars when they even have to make the Mustang body fit the control chassis and have it look like a bloody Daewoo, so how can there be the decades long rivalries when neither brand is represented with any parts of theirs on the cars? Supercars is a joke, and the sooner they make GT, GT4 ,or even the Hyundai Excel challenge the premier motorsport in Australia the better. 1 hour ago, Stephen Tinker said: I wonder what Channel 7 (or is it 9 or 10) are thinking re financial revenue lost if (when) Supercars finally go? Means nothing to them mate. They didnt want to pay the exorbitant cost that Foxtel did for the tv rights, so they took the lesser cost of highlights packages. And really, who wants to watch an hour long motor race show with 30 minutes of commercials? They would rather have a bunch of D grade celebrities appear on cooking or dancing shows than have motorsport GC9911 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raven Posted 18February, 2020 Report Share Posted 18February, 2020 4 hours ago, LeeM said: @Raven The Supercar mob have flatly opposed the GT4 concept for years, yet I'm sure they're now looking at it. Supercars has been a joke since they went to the 'Cars of the future' concept which I believe Skaife had afinancial interest in bringing to fruition. If they'd kept on using the base Holden and Ford chassis', they'd have a lot more credibility with regards to the Ford v Holden rivalry. As I mentioned, there is NOTHING Holden Commodore, or Ford Mustang about the current Supercars when they even have to make the Mustang body fit the control chassis and have it look like a bloody Daewoo, so how can there be the decades long rivalries when neither brand is represented with any parts of theirs on the cars? Supercars is a joke, and the sooner they make GT, GT4 ,or even the Hyundai Excel challenge the premier motorsport in Australia the better. Means nothing to them mate. They didnt want to pay the exorbitant cost that Foxtel did for the tv rights, so they took the lesser cost of highlights packages. And really, who wants to watch an hour long motor race show with 30 minutes of commercials? They would rather have a bunch of D grade celebrities appear on cooking or dancing shows than have motorsport It will certainly be interesting to see the way they go ,,I am not a supercars fan either but there is a lot of money tie up in the supercars eg Teams , promoters ,sponsors alike and I suspect they will have to make some big decisions regarding their future soon. From my understanding they are very much against a GT4 format ,,,,I suspect because this is under the FIA and Supercars and its members with a vested financial interests do not wish to get involved with the FIA and lose any control over what the have.. Surely they must not be surprised by yesterdays announcement the writing has been on the wall for some time now ,,apart from Rolan Danes comments ,,there seems at the moment to be very little reaction on the V8 supercar site ... Interesting times ahead .. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeM Posted 18February, 2020 Report Share Posted 18February, 2020 One bloke I respect is Roland Dane. Doesnt mince his words and is very cluey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coastr Posted 19February, 2020 Author Report Share Posted 19February, 2020 On 17/02/2020 at 02:35, Dreamr said: Apparently LHD accounts for 75% of production and RHD only 25% ... not worth the research and development ... I think it's more than that. The types of cars that are RHD are not the ones that sell in the USA, and China probably needs its own models unique to the market. So none of the investment in RHD is applicable beyond specialty cars like the Corvette and (maybe) the Camaro. The volume on full sized pickups and SUVs in RHD is miniscule - Australia and maybe a tiny, tiny bit in Africa. RHD as sold in Europe for UK is dominated by Euro makes and in Japan by Japanese makes. Take out Japan and UK and what is left? Not much that GM is interested in. UK keeps making noises about outright bans on petrol/diesel passenger cars, whereas selling full sized chevys to Americans has decades left to run. I read somewhere that GM has been hopeless with managing brands - having killed Saab, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Holden and abandoning Opel and Vauxhall. Whereas VW has managed to make a go of a stable of brands, eg Bentley, Porsche, Seat, Skoda, Lamborghini and so on. The big difference is that VW has managed to recognize the value proposition and brand history of the cars, as it slaps Golf/Passat drivetrains into everything under the sun. TBH Holden under VW ownership, while weird sounding, would probably actually work in the long run than the mishmash of Daewoo/Opel attempts they have had recently. Imagine an Passat/A6 platformed commodore and a pair Touraeg / Tiguan platformed Holden SUVs. You could even bring out a Golf platform based Torana with a V6 and 4motion. Priced right and marketed to punters who wouldn't be seen dead in a Euro could work. But that's all just wishful thinking - GM decided it doesn't want to play, so it's all dead and gone. It's an old saying but 'things that can't go on forever, don't'. I wonder what else is yet to drop in the motor industry. As for motor racing - maybe going back to grassroots might be the key. A lot of investment in flight for supercars is essentially sunk. It will play out to an increasingly disinterested audience and then go belly up quickly. Motorsports needs full grids and interesting fields, and ways for newcomers to make their way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeM Posted 19February, 2020 Report Share Posted 19February, 2020 Didn't Walkinshaw have the contract to convert the Camaro's and those massive utes to RHD? 22 minutes ago, Coastr said: As for motor racing - maybe going back to grassroots might be the key. A lot of investment in flight for supercars is essentially sunk. It will play out to an increasingly disinterested audience and then go belly up quickly. Motorsports needs full grids and interesting fields, and ways for newcomers to make their way. Many motorsport fans are saying the same thing, including me. I rarely watch any motorsport for a length of time now (except Carrera Cup, world rally and MotoGP) as it's just a processional, strategic borefest at most top level motorsport. Get back to grass roots racing and the fans will come back GC9911 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason A Posted 19February, 2020 Report Share Posted 19February, 2020 Football, meat pies, kangaroos and No Holden cars - WTF Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstone Posted 19February, 2020 Report Share Posted 19February, 2020 Just lucky our government didn't give them any more of our hard earned bucks. Oh wait, they did apparently. Lunatics running the asylum. No interest in the V8s for years. No desire to own one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OZ930 Posted 28February, 2020 Report Share Posted 28February, 2020 On 19/02/2020 at 17:55, Jason A said: Football, meat pies, kangaroos and No Holden cars - WTF Footballs and meat pies made from kangaroos hit by Holden cars On 20/02/2020 at 04:47, firstone said: Just lucky our government didn't give them any more of our hard earned bucks. Oh wait, they did apparently With all the millions the government paid to GM, why couldn’t they just take over the factory and keep all the jobs. Isn’t that their mantra..jobs, jobs, jobs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilson59 Posted 28February, 2020 Report Share Posted 28February, 2020 5 hours ago, OZ930 said: Footballs and meat pies made from kangaroos hit by Holden cars With all the millions the government paid to GM, why couldn’t they just take over the factory and keep all the jobs. Isn’t that their mantra..jobs, jobs, jobs. Which jobs ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OZ930 Posted 28February, 2020 Report Share Posted 28February, 2020 1 hour ago, wilson59 said: Which jobs ? You know. The ones for the foreign workers ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raven Posted 28February, 2020 Report Share Posted 28February, 2020 1 hour ago, wilson59 said: Which jobs ? exactly the factory workers all got retrenched 2 years ago October 2017 was the last month of the Aussie built cars ,,,Holden has just been buying time since then ,,,,I think they knew back then the end was coming as they have made no efforts in those 2 years to improve their financial problems ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeM Posted 28February, 2020 Report Share Posted 28February, 2020 55 minutes ago, Raven said: ,I think they knew back then the end was coming as they have made no efforts in those 2 years to improve their financial problems ... I was at Mitsubishi for 16 years, and probably half of that time we knew the writing was on the wall for the companies eventual demise, as Australian operations were just 1% of the global Mitsubishi corporation so we meant nothing to them. They were receiving government assistance to prop up manufacturing every other year, and one $200m financial package was handed to them a year or two before they closed and had to pay it back. Whether they did or not remains to be seen. All vehicle manufacturing was doomed from the start with dropping the import tariffs, so all blame is on the government. Raven 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomo Posted 29February, 2020 Report Share Posted 29February, 2020 2 hours ago, LeeM said: I was at Mitsubishi for 16 years, and probably half of that time we knew the writing was on the wall for the companies eventual demise, as Australian operations were just 1% of the global Mitsubishi corporation so we meant nothing to them. They were receiving government assistance to prop up manufacturing every other year, and one $200m financial package was handed to them a year or two before they closed and had to pay it back. Whether they did or not remains to be seen. All vehicle manufacturing was doomed from the start with dropping the import tariffs, so all blame is on the government. Your not wrong there Mate, The Adelaide holden factory had the car industry by the balls, They even made the bodys for the usa cars and exported to the states, The amalgamation with the General stuffed us, Even back then the Governments would not back Ozys, What about that other fella Phill irving, didn't he build a motor bike called a Vincent? LeeM 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeM Posted 29February, 2020 Report Share Posted 29February, 2020 We exported a lot of built cars to the UAE, USA and other countries too @tomo, and I think we even sent engines to Mitsubishi Japan. One of THE biggest balls ups that Mitsubishi USA did, was offer no deposit, no payments for a year or something on new cars (the then Magna/380), and at the end the honeymoon period, all of those buyers just handed back a rumoured 80,000 cars leaving a monumental debt for Mitsubishi. They had a huge factory being built in the US for car production, yet I'm told by a couple of friends (Mitsubishi executives) that that is what caused a lot of financial problems for the Mitsubishi corporation, and they put a stop to the factory and all of their hopes manufacturing in the US. It cost thousands of jobs. I knew we were going under when they started offering redundancy packages in material handling where I was, as it was TNT who were taking over all of their handling operations, so I grabbed $100k and sat on my arse for nearly 2. I had the option to transition over to TNT as well as taking the redundancy, but thought I'd enjoy some time off...which I did and have no regrets (In hindsight, I should've used the cash more wisely, yet I learnt to play guitar and my golf game got much better within that 2 years off 😁). When executives were leaving every other week, including the big boss, you know to follow their lead, as they know a lot more of the ins and outs than us plebs on the shop floor. Any financial assistance car manufacturers were getting from the federal and state governments was just helping them tread water until the pool got emptied. I solely blame the government for all of the car manufacturers closing up, as they had the chance to raise import tariffs to put off the imported car market, yet failed miserably costing thousands of jobs. The domino effect was for every employee at Mitsubishi and Holden, there was 3 vendor/suppliers employees who also lost their job, and when you consider Mitsubishi had roughly 3000 employees, that's a potential 9000 people out of work. I can name 3 companies off the top of my head that went under just when Mitsubishi closed tomo 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter M Posted 29February, 2020 Report Share Posted 29February, 2020 5 hours ago, LeeM said: ... so all blame is on the government. Lee, I think the root cause is actually lazy management, dullards made fat and unmotivated by decades of high import tariffs and an assumption that our isolation would protect them forever and that their consumers should be happy to accept anything they offered. I guess government should have warned them earlier than the eighties with the start of tariff reductions initiated by Senator Button but by that time the management of these companies had squandered the good times and left it too late. LeeM and tomo 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeM Posted 29February, 2020 Report Share Posted 29February, 2020 @Peter M Fair point, though the government kinda shot themselves in the foot by reducing tariffs, then seeing the extra thousands of good hard working people unemployed and having to claim benefits. It was avoidable in my uneducated eyes by keeping the tariffs at a level where these companies could have sustained, yet I'm no bean counter/business type Peter M 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.