'Mummy, what's a Holden?': The biggest automotive events of this century in Australia | Opinion

Has one quarter of a century already passed?

With 2025 marking the 26^th year since this century started on January 1, 2000, it’s time to look back at some of the seismic events that helped shape the automotive industry this millennium.

Here are our picks of the biggest.

1. The end of full-vehicle manufacturing in Australia: 2017

It couldn’t be anything else, could it.

On the first day of this century, there were four full-line vehicle manufacturers in Australia – Holden, Ford, Toyota and Mitsubishi.

Nissan had turned off the Dandenong factory lights in 1992, Chrysler’s Adelaide plants were taken over by an ascending Mitsubishi in 1979 and Leyland (formerly Morris and Austin) had ceased making its uniquely Australian cars in Sydney by 1975. Fierce competition, mounting losses and ailing parents played a major part in their departures. They usually do.

The dismantling of tariffs on imported vehicles during the 2000s, combined with local content requirements that had resulted in scores of brands assembling vehicles in Australia from the Post War period as diverse as Citroen, Rambler and Mercedes-Benz, hastened the remaining brands to also exit Australian manufacturing.

2007 FPV BF GT.

That, and resistance to build the models that consumers were switching to, namely smaller SUVs. Mitsubishi folded first this century in 2008.

Still, nobody quite expected the dominos to fall so quickly after Ford announced the end in late May, 2013; Holden followed by December 11 and Toyota by early February, 2014. One union official declared that for every manufacturing job that evaporated, up to nine more in supporting industries would also go. These were dark days.

As the final Holden VF Commodore exited Elizabeth in Adelaide on October 20, 2017 – a year after the Ford Falcon in Broadmeadows and just 17 days after Toyota Camry production ended in Altona – so did the last mass-production vehicle to be manufactured wholly in Australia.

The first that fits the description of a ‘car’ was probably the Phaeton steam-engined model made in Melbourne 121 years earlier, while the 1901 Tarrant also from Victoria is believed to be one of the earliest petrol-powered vehicles. These were unique to Australia. This country had developed the skillset to make cars early on due to our isolation.

Ford, and what became known as Australian Motor Industries that began assembling English Standards but really hit it big by eventually building Toyotas during 1963, erected factories in the mid 1920s. General Motors dusted off a World War II-era US Chevrolet prototype to create the first Holden-badged model in late 1948 while Chrysler started building cars here in mid-1951.

2. Holden’s demise: 2020

1948 Holden 48-215.

Do people actually care that Holden is gone?

On February 17, 2020, General Motors announced that it was “retiring” the brand in Australia.

It still came as a shock, despite free-falling sales and GM already exiting out of mass-market right-hand-drive internal combustion engine production worldwide; surely that served as a massive red flag.

But by then few people trusted Holden. Not with unreliable and/or low-quality imports tarnishing the brand irreparably by the end of last decade.

GM’s decision was reported as Australia was in a midst of the horrific Black Summer bushfire carnage and the world was anxious about an escalating global pandemic. This could not be further from the jingoistic car-starved Post War nation on the brink of an economic miracle that Holden’s earlier models were born into, catapulting it to an unsurpassed 50 per cent market share.

But we should care about Holden. Not only was it the first mass-produced vehicle created (real or imagined) for our country, that first 48-215 model kicked-started an entire industry of competitors, suppliers and distributors investing in Australia, created jobs and skills that culminated in that now-lost ability we once had – to design and engineer vehicles from scratch. Holden engendered a national pride that still unites people, like a major international sporting event victory, that no other carmaker did, can or ever probably will.

3. Electrification: 2001

2001 Honda Insight.

Toyota’s 1997 Tokyo show-stealing Prius, the world’s first modern hybrid production model, ended up changing the automotive landscape.

Australia was way behind other mature markets with embracing electrification because of cheap fuel and lack of owner incentives, but the writing was on the wall by the end of the 2000s, with many rivals either copying or downright licencing the hybrid tech to keep up with soaring international consumer demand.

Globally, the 2010s saw the emergence of modern battery electric vehicles (EVs), led by the Nissan Leaf and sexed up by Tesla and others, while back home, it wouldn’t be until Toyota released the latest-generation RAV4 with a hybrid option that the penny seemed to drop and Australians joined very, very long queues to be behind the wheel of one.

Fun fact: the first hybrid sold in Australia was the original Honda Insight, beating the Prius to market by six months in early 2001.

4. Remanufacturing LHD-to-RHD vehicles: 2015

2015 Ram 2500 Laramie.

In those dark days after Ford, Holden and Toyota had announced the cessation of Australian full-line vehicle manufacturing and before the lights actually went out, vehicle importer Ateco Automotive embarked on a program to remanufacture the US Ram full-sized pick-up. That was in 2015.

Industry pundits were sceptical, but the lack of alternatives, keen pricing and clever marketing prised open an old market for heavy duty utes once dominated by the Ford F-Series. It boomed beyond anybody’s expectations.

GM joined in on the action in the early 2020s with the Silverado, followed by Ford’s F-150 and now the Toyota Tundra – a first for the Japanese giant anywhere in the world. Now big business, remanufacturing has also leveraged some of the old Australian-manufacturing knowhow in the post-2017 era.

5. China: 2009

2009 Great Wall V240.

Chinese brand Great Wall Motors (now just GWM) arrived on to the Australian market in mid-2009 with a range of cheap utes, but others like Chery struggled to gain traction up until the world went topsy-turvy in 2020.

Even though new-car prices soared, demand also rocketed as people avoided public transport, creating severe supply restrictions. And into that void stepped Chinese brands MG and Haval, which had been bit players until then, with affordable, pleasantly styled models with plenty of features and no wait times. And they haven’t looked back.

China also led with attainable EVs, which benefited from Software Driven Vehicle tech that slash development times and costs.

What their long-term durability ends up looking like is still up for debate, and many if not all have copped flack for their lack of nuanced driver-assist safety intervention, but as of 2025 few consumers seem to care. They’re relatively cheap, fresh and shiny.

This sets the stage for what is shaping up to be one of the biggest battlegrounds for the second quarter century of the automotive industry.

Come back in early 2050 to find out how that shaped up.