OZ Auto Industry Bailout

Today's update...

[size=+1]Gloom for car industry as sales plummet[/size]

Richard Blackburn
March 4, 2009 - 12:34PM

The car industry continues to bear the brunt of the economic downturn, with new car sales down 22% last month.

Four-wheel-drives and prestige vehicles were the worst hit, with large 4WD sales down by almost 50% and some luxury brands selling less than half the number of vehicles they sold last February.

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http://business.theage.com.au/business/gloom-for-car-industry-as-sales-plummet-20090304-8nzk.html

Looks like it's time for "Oz Auto Industry Bailout Package Mk II", saviour Krudd!!!

.. and what a big pit of money that could turn out to be. Part of it would be a bailout riding on another bailout (GM) wouldn't it? If GM went down the ditch, Holden would almost certainly be gone anyhow, no matter how much was thrown at it.

While it sounds bad on paper to lose 22% on the same period last year, surely it was always unreasonable for them to expect yoy growth for an industry from here until infinity? the actual sales numbers are probably just back to what they were a few years ago.

Seems to me they've become so used to the good times, they never even entertained the idea of a slow period or even a recession, and have overstocked and under-prepared for such an eventuality. That seems just like bad business.

I reckon there's a good chance at least one of them will pull the plug here, these compamies cannot sustain falls in sales of that magnitude.

Sometimes I wish the Darwinian Theory of Survival of the Fittest from adaption would apply to industries across the board. We would design and create faster and help the environment. - Least of all our own lungs.

There is a reason why nature changes - more should observe and apply.

If you didn't trust a car sales guy before whoa be careful now.

Just for the record - I bought my 4wd on EBAY!!! for a song - the insurance was automatically $7000 more. Had it checked over by brother and NRMA. Was a mummy car in pristine condition. There are some real deals you can do yourself.

If you can find a Porsche 911S 997 on Ebay I'd be very grateful.

Oh dear - ObamaSan has decreed US autos to become 40% more fuel efficient or somesuch over the next few years.

Well, it didn't take long (a couple of hours later) for Oz auto industry spokesman to cry a response along the lines of "PLEASE Mr Rudd - don't do the same, P-L-E-A-S-E it will HURT us!!"

I would have thought a more publicly savvy response would have been "We in the Australian automotive manufacturing industry feel very secure in knowing that with continuing total government support and financial backing, we too can develop more fuel efficient vehicles at no great cost to the consumer".

But no.

The PANIC card has been played instead.

They can be so dumb.

MrBurns said:

I reckon there's a good chance at least one of them will pull the plug here, these compamies cannot sustain falls in sales of that magnitude.

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good, let's stop making cars, and just go back to making steel.

Aussiejeff said:

Oh dear - ObamaSan has decreed US autos to become 40% more fuel efficient or somesuch over the next few years.

Well, it didn't take long (a couple of hours later) for Oz auto industry spokesman to cry a response along the lines of "PLEASE Mr Rudd - don't do the same, P-L-E-A-S-E it will HURT us!!"

I would have thought a more publicly savvy response would have been "We in the Australian automotive manufacturing industry feel very secure in knowing that with continuing total government support and financial backing, we too can develop more fuel efficient vehicles at no great cost to the consumer".

But no.

The PANIC card has been played instead.

They can be so dumb.

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Same rubbish with the "clean coal" .. We should be converting/building all new stations as natural gas powered.. but oh no, that's much too expensive to do right now, we'll wait until the rest of the world does it, even though we have massive supplies of natural gas.

Holden may be sold by General Motors even if the parent company avoids bankruptcy expected this week, some car industry experts believe.

"Bankrupt or not, GM will continue to downsize very quickly," said US-based Plunkett Research chief executive Jack Plunkett. "My forecast is that they are very likely to sell or close most non North-American businesses," with the exception of China.

ANZ senior economist Julie Toth agrees.

"I expect if and when General Motors in the US goes bust, its overseas subsidiaries will be sold, including in Australia," she said.

"The Australian Government's reaction will depend on the suite of potential bidders."

The narrow choices of possible suitors for the Australian icon may present more problems for Holden.

"It seems a gross shortage of potential buyers will be a huge problem for GM worldwide, regardless of the viability of each individual business unit," Ms Toth said.

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http://business.theage.com.au/business/holden-could-be-sold-as-gm-teeters-20090529-bpgo.html

No problemo! KRuddSwan Ltd will simply quote "too big to fail" and buy out the Oz franchise with Oz taxpayer funds like GObama in the US!

Where's the hassle, really?

I will sell my Mazda and buy a Beholden to support my local worker.

Go, Holden, G-O-O-O-O!

gfresh said:

Same rubbish with the "clean coal" .. We should be converting/building all new stations as natural gas powered.. but oh no, that's much too expensive to do right now, we'll wait until the rest of the world does it, even though we have massive supplies of natural gas.

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I'll go as far as to predict that most of the natural gas power stations being built will end up as, at best, financial and national economic millstones just as their oil-fired predecessors did. Then we get to spend years at the policy level working out what, if anything, can be done with them and what to do about alternative power generation.

Natural gas is increasingly moving toward globalised pricing (already happening in WA) and is also it's increasingly viewed as an alternative to petrol, rather than an alternative boiler fuel, and priced accordingly. Pure madness to be building baseload power plants running on that stuff...

100 year's worth I hear you say. Not if you treble demand to replace coal and then continue to increase that at 3 -4% per annum. Even worse once you start switching from petrol to gas for transport, something we're likely to have not much choice about in my opinion given the (lack of) oil discovery success over the past 25 years.

As for the car industry, well gas powered cars make some sense. At least we've got another 10 - 15 years of reasonably cheap fuel to run them which is more than can be said for petrol.

Tragic shame to squander that fuel in boilers though - I'd go as far as saying a global treaty to ban it, rather than moves to encourage it, makes sense. What do we do for transport in 20 years time when we've hit peak oil and peak gas? Coal-fired cars?

Motor Industry head backs government story

http://livenews.com.au/news/mtaa-chief-backs-govts-car-dealer-story/2009/6/21/210648

But Mr Delaney said Mr Grant's case was no exception.

"The treatment that Mr Grant, a member of mine, got was no different from the treatment all my other members got," Mr Delaney told the Ten Network on Sunday.

The MTAA has more than 1,400 car dealer members, and Mr Delaney was a key player in lobbying the government late last year to set up OzCar as a vehicle to provide finance for customers in the wake of pressure for big US finance providers to pull out of the local market because of the global recession.

Smurf1976 said:

... As for the car industry, well gas powered cars make some sense...

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Indeed. If only we could somehow harness the incredible amount of waste gas emanating from Parliament House in Canberra atm!

Imagine how many cars THAT would power!?