Goodbye, Holden: GM to Cease Production of the Iconic Aussie Brand

After more than a century of producing cars much loved by successive generations of Aussies, General Motors has announced that it is killing off the Icon from Down Under.

If you haven’t been to Australia, you could be a little forgiven for not knowing what a Holden is, but to your average Aussie, the very name will envoke memories of summer camping holidays in the family station wagon.

It was likely to have been the car they were driven home in from the hospital where they were born or was the first car they got the thrill of their first drive in. It was the vehicle that so many love-struck teenagers would have had their first passionate kiss in and of course where many of those newborns being driven home from the hospital were created in the first place.

The Holden company was quite an old Australian institution, which began by making sadles in 1856. In 1908, they branched out into the manufacturing of cars and were eventually bought out by GM in 1938. Now, falling sales and high costs have signalled the end of the road and many families will mourn the passing of a tradition which was as Australian as Meat Pies, Football and Kangaroos…..or so the advertising would have us believe.,