The end of Holden: pondering the byzantine, badge-engineered legacy of a soon-to-retire marque

So what is the automotive world actually losing now that GM has officially announced, in a press release issued on Sunday, the end of Holden?

That question is actually not very easy to answer. Once you delve into Holden’s history, you realize quickly that it’s quite a rabbit hole.

But you also realize quickly that there isn’t a great deal of history there when it comes to Holden as a producer of original vehicles.

Much of their history has consisted of selling, under the Holden badge, vehicles built by other manufacturers including Chevrolet, Daewoo, Isuzu, Nissan, Opel, Suzuki, and Toyota.

Yeah, that’s a mighty long list. And it’s a lot of badge engineering. And the list gets even longer the further back you trace Holden’s history.

But the picture remains complex even when you shift your attention to Holden’s ostensibly first-hand contributions to the automotive milieu. As an example, let’s take a look at one of their more venerated supposedly original creations: the Holden Monaro, which was produced in four generations over 1968–1977 and 2001–2006.

In the last generation, a badge-engineered variant of the Holden Monaro was marketed in the U.S. as the reprise of the legendary Pontiac GTO nameplate, shortly before GM killed the Pontiac brand. 

If you take a quick, casual look at the first or second-generation Holden Monaro (a 1968 GTS coupe is pictured above), it’s easy to leap to the conclusion that it’s just a Chevy Nova or other GM X-platform model, badge engineered for the Australian market, even though that isn’t, quite, what the Monaro was.

Hemmings states it well: you could look at a first-generation Monaro and “catch elements of a number of American GM cars here and there—a Pontiac wheel there, an Olds Toronado rear quarter there….” But those bits and pieces were put together in a way that created a car that’s different from any one of those U.S. models where you might see some flash of resemblance.

Some described these early Monaros as a looking like what you’d get if a Nova and a Camaro had a baby.

As the body curves its way back from the shutlines at the doorjamb toward the rear bumper, it fattens up more compared to the X bodies, giving it a feistier look that makes the Nova seem more conservative in contrast. And the underside of the C pillar tales a sharper, more abrupt downward curve as it tapers below the fastback roof.

It was a look that was comparatively young, fast, aggressive, giving the Monaro a more rebellious and adventurous vibe in the context of its time. When equipped with Chevrolet V8s, Monaro’s could back up this look with some serious power for their time. The 1968 GTS, for example, was available with a Chevrolet 327 that was good for 250 horsepower and earned some good cred on the Australian motorsports circuit. 

These variations of the Monaro from its cousins on the U.S. market were great illustrations of both the strengths and failings of GM’s “use as much of the existing parts bin” approach to design through much of its history.

It’s important to understand that Holden came under the GM umbrella remarkably early in its history, in 1931. So the company was quickly and thoroughly assimilated into GM’s culture as a highly engineered corporate conglomerate that strives to optimize at every cost point and take advantage of economies of scale.

Other than a few models that, like the Monaro, could be loosely described as “original,” Holden through much of its modern history has been little more than a badge that could capitalize on brand recognition in Australia to help market vehicles built elsewhere, by a slew of other manufacturers.

As a case in point, let’s look at the current lineup still being marketed in Australia as GM begins the wind-down process as we near the end of Holden:

• The Holden Acadia is the GMC Acadia, built in Tennessee and sold in Australia and New Zealand as a captive import
• The Holden Astra Hatch is an Opel product, marketed in the U.S. as the Chevrolet Cruze Hatch
• The Holden Colorado, built by GM in Thailand, is a different spec of pickup truck than the Chevrolet Colorado marketed in the U.S. but nevertheless is a “Holden” only in the sense of its badge
• The Holden Trailblazer is a variant of the Holden Colorado—see above
• The Holden Trax is built by GM in South Korea, cross-marketed in the U.S. as the Chevrolet Trax, and also rebadged as the Buick Encore

You get the idea.

Basically, the last truly Holden-built car was the Commodore, a model that could be said to have given Holden one last moment of glory when a rear-wheel drive, V8-powered variant was marketed in the U.S. as the Chevy SS from 2013–2017, revered among many enthusiasts of modern muscle cars.

But the Commodore ceased production in Australia in 2017 and ceased production completely in 2019, essentially rendering Holden an entirely badge-engineered brand.

All that said, there is always something sad about seeing the end of just about any automotive marque. And it’s reasonable to wonder whether GM, in doing away with the brand completely, just might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater—doing the same thing that, arguably, they did with Pontiac in the U.S.

If the sampling of reactions presented by The Australian, a NewsCorp-owned national broadsheet and online news outlet, is a reasonably fair representation of public opinion, there is still a lot of at least spoken brand loyalty, whether deserved or not, for Holden in Australia.

The Australian quotes finance journalist Ross Greenwood as commenting that “Holden’s demise was a ‘classic example of a troubled, distant head office not understanding or caring about a proud, respected local brand.’”

But that comment seems to fly in the face of the reality that, after nearly 90 years of GM ownership, Holden has not been truly local for a long, long time.

The remarks quoted in The Australian do indeed suggest an ardent emotional attachment to the brand in the Land Down Under, including those of Brent Montgomery, social media manager for the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship, who nonetheless admitted that “We all knew that this day was coming.”                 

But that begs a big question: if the attachment is so ardent, and if the likelihood of the end of Holden was no secret, then why hasn’t some enterprising group of Australian investors come to GM with an irresistible offer to buy the Holden brand and revitalize it with some fresh thinking?

Maybe it has something to do with the stark reality that, other than the brand itself, there is little left of Holden to buy that is truly theirs in any pure sense, after so many decades of GM ownership and years of brand-diluting entanglements with the products of other automakers.

Another stark reality is that these entanglements date to the earliest days of Holden’s existence as an automaker, when the company earned its keep by serving as a builder in Australia of automotive bodies to mate with chassis from a wide range of manufacturers, from Ford to Fiat and Studebaker to Willys-Knight. 

In their announcement of the end of Holden, GM said their plan is to focus their strategies for the Australian market on their “specialty vehicle business.”

Among the factors in their decision were the supposedly prohibitive economics of manufacturing right-hand-drive cars.

But that comes across as an eyebrow-raising excuse for pulling out of an affluent region with a population (if you include both Australia and New Zealand) approaching 30 million and growing and, at least in Australia, a way of life that entails intensive transportation needs. 

And even if the “right-hand-drive” reason is for the end of Holden is real, why not market the “specialty vehicles” in Australia as Holdens, keeping the brand active to a limited extent, ready to resurrect more widely should the market shift back in a more favorable direction?

But, then again, this is GM—a corporation whose track record has, to say the least, not always been stellar when it comes to anticipating market shifts and making the right calls in response to them.

One word: Cimarron.