The E series commadore seems to have hit a hurdle,last week the factory closed for a week due to poor sales and today holdens announced 600 jobs to go.

Such a shame to see so many losing their jobs, but i dont think the new commodore was worth it. People are shifting away from big cars now, and i sure hope ford is prepared for it. This might be the last true falcon we know? Wont be long before we see a four cylinder or a diesel falcon i think

For the last 3 years GM Holden have cut staff at both it's Fishermans Bend and Elizabeth plants totaling thousands of jobs gone, I know from working at Fishermans Bend that there will be more jobs lost when they finally close the casting and the family2 4cyl plant's in the near future, when I was working at GM Holden at Fishermans Bend they had started skimping on security even, They have 1 gaurd to look after a plant that cost well over 500 million dollars to set up and a computer room that holds all of GM Holdens information, even back then they wanted to remove that gaurd from the plant.

You hear ford boss speaking the other day?

Lol, basic jist of it is - we know large cars are falling in popularity, but stuff it, that's what we make.

they took a gamble but can't recoup the spending sooner. they just ending up with debts over another debt.

Ford Aus on the other hand is more reserve, taking small steps at a time... Bloody tight a***'s.

so the billion dollar baby is actually costing how much??

thats the kind of thinking that will push ford way into the future,
sonuds like the guy who said "yeah the au's a little ugly but stuff it, people will get used to it"

Yeah i was talking about Gorman...

http://carsguide.news.com.au/story/0,20 ... 22,00.html

The size and shape of the next Falcon are locked in, even if it turns out to be "the wrong vehicle at the wrong time".

Note to self: dont play poker with this guy!!!

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Last edited by blackjack_original on Fri Jun 06, 2014 10:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't quite understand diesels competing with toyota. Asians prefer hybrid power while Euro's like their turbo diesels.

Seriously holden shot themselves in the foot big time. Their biggest private seller is the SS followed by the clubsport R8. The majority of other sales (Omega right through to caprice) are mostly government cars. The genral public have finally woken up to the fact that 6 litre v8's aren't that great for the environment. Pretty much the only guys buying that oversized RC car called the VE are post modern bogans.

As far as I'm aware holden don'thave any smaller v8 engines to chose from if they want to downsize and keep a v8. Ford have heaps of options to choose from. They can go back to a 5.0 (albeit with 4 valves per cylinder) or they can drop down to the 4.6 wih either 2 or 4 valves per cylinder. And if that american 4 door concept is anything to go by, we even have the option of running E85.

And Tom Gorman has the biggest pokerface of any business executive I've seen. Who kows what he has in store for us within the next 12 to 24 months. All I want is that he carries the Geoff Polities legacy into the future, nothing else.

mitsubishi had to know the motors and boxes where dodgy and thay still used them in many models later. o and latest ones look s**t.
bring on the astroboy style jet boots i say

Hahaha, brilliant!!

Po mo bo's!!

They gambled with the AU and are still paying dearly for it. Because they had to spend half that again to turn it back into a box car
Now the big box car is only selling 1900 a month. And they want to push ahead with a big fuel guzzling car again in 2008. Even though they have the luxury now of watching what the VE is doing, and how Holden are handling it.
He says it's locked in and that's what they do, make big cars. I say really foolish, and I'm glad I don't have a large investment with Ford.

Time to downsize, and make really good mid sized vehicles. Turn some Mondeo's, Focus's (Foci) and Fiesta's into road going, world conquering rockets. I know they can!

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Last edited by blackjack_original on Fri Jun 06, 2014 10:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't know about you but have you seen the crash test footage of some chinese built cars? I think Ill just stick to a taxi and not wear a seatbelt thanks. Atleast that way I know that the sterring collumn won't break away and snap my head backwards.

But if Ford Aus want to compete they have to get serious about bio fuels. By manufacturing cars that run on E85 or B80 they oil companies will be forced to make these fuels. The government doesn't dictate the terms of operation to the oil companies rather the car companies (and in turn the consumers) do. At this point in time the general uneducated public still have reservations abut ethanol blended fuel. They won't run it in their brand new small cars because uncle baz's HQ panno broke down after running some of that stuff in it a few years ago.

If people want to act as consious as they say they are then they have to be their own detectives and read up on this stuff rather then take the word of a politician or some head of a lobby group with a hidden agenda as gospel.

And as a side note zoom magazine did some dyno testing with 4 fuels. V power (formally known as optimax), Synergy 8000, 95 octane premo and United boost 98 (E10). After a few hours playing with mixtures and timing Boost 98 was the clear winner making an extra 9rwkW over ultimate and 13 over synergy on a bone stock Rb26 (fitted in an R33 GTS-T). The only mod being the boost wound up to 14psi. That's my vote for ethanol.