Adventure Reviews

The Australian car industry is waiting around to die. With every passing day, analysing its problems becomes less a diagnosis and more a post-mortem. The only question is whether anyone has the courage to sign the death certificate. The industry's immediate crisis reflects the difficulties confronting our manufacturing industries raised to a power of 10. Under pressure from the resources boom, structural weaknesses that previously led to slow decline have morphed into a sea of red ink.The numbers are stark. Constrained by the high exchange rate and by ever more intense international competition, the prices Australian manufacturers receive for their products increased by just more than 1 per cent a year from 2003-04 to now.That is one-third the rate of producer price inflation for the whole market sector (which covers the commercial -- that is, non-government -- parts of the economy) and not even one-tenth the rate of increase in prices that mining has enjoyed. Manufacturing wages, as measured in the national accounts, rose at virtually the same rate as for the entire market sector, and even exceeded wage growth in mining.With manufacturing wages increasing more than twice as rapidly as labour productivity, real unit labour costs grew while profitability collapsed. Overall, for the market sector, the rate of return on capital rose by about half a per cent a year; for manufacturing, it fell by 5.5 per cent a year. The surprise is not that manufacturing is in strife but that any of it remains.That it does largely reflect the durability of its assets. If manufacturers could magically transform their plant and equipment into mines, they would have done so long ago; it hardly needs to be said that they cannot. Yes, hours worked declined by 1 per cent a year; but with manufacturing's share of market sector output falling from 19 per cent in 1999-2000 to 13.6 per cent a decade later, firms have been left with structurally high labour costs and production levels far too low to reap economies of scale.Nowhere is that clearer than in the car industry. And the reality is that there is no prospect of our car assemblers achieving the scale economies that might allow them to absorb the wage penalty. Australia's share of world car production has declined from 1.7 per cent in 1974 to less than one-third of 1 per cent last year. With barely 200,000 cars rolling off our assembly lines, the annual output is not even 30 per cent of Thailand's; an atomic microscope is needed to spot it compared with China's 15 million.Yet the economies of scale dictate annual production runs of at least 250,000 -- and that is per plant, and hence far above the industry's total output. To make matters worse, the environment in which the car industry operates has been transformed in irreversible ways. Not only have consumer preferences moved away from the standard sedan, which has been the industry's mainstay, but lower tariffs, declining transport costs and a high exchange rate have allowed Australian consumers access to the best the world has to offer. As that has occurred, more exacting standards have become the norm, making the Australian industry's conventional products seem uninspiring, if not positively bland.Rising consumer expectations are a trapdoor: movement only goes one way. That its products don't offer great value makes it all the more difficult for the industry to adjust to that shift. A survey by the RACQ shows the total five-year running costs of an imported Mazda 6 are 16 per cent less than those of a Ford Falcon. But if resale prices now decline 35 per cent more rapidly for Falcons than for Mazdas, it is not simply because of differences in running costs. Rather, it reflects consumers' perceptions that the Australian industry's days are numbered.Nor is that reckoning far off. The phasing in of the Euro 5 and 6 emissions standards, due to be completed by 2018, will impose further substantial costs for redesign and retooling; to believe the assemblers' parents will meekly take the hit is delusional. To even contemplate remaining in Australia beyond that point, the firms will demand open-ended commitments to ever-rising subsidies.Those subsidies are already proving fiscally and politically poisonous. Across the past decade, the industry has received $19 billion in assistance, an amount equivalent to nearly $30,000 for each of its 50,000 workers each and every year. But even that is an underestimate as it excludes the effects of a host of protectionist measures, including preferential government procurement, restrictions on importing second-hand cars, and unique Australian technical standards. Keeping the industry alive could require retaining all those measures while ramping the other forms of assistance up by more than 50 per cent in exchange for ever shrinking production volumes.The industry, with energetic backing from the unions, argues that assistance is justified by claimed skill and other benefits to the economy as a whole. Those claims make no sense. Far from being especially skill-intensive, the industry's design capacities pale compared with the range and sheer complexities of the technical challenges dealt with by Australia's major miners. That runs against the myth, endemic in the Australian Labor Party and the ACTU, that mining is as simple as digging dirt out of the ground, but it is Australian mining, not the car industry, that is pushing the frontier in areas such as complex data analysis, computer aided design, visualisation and robotics.No surprise, then, that when the RAND Corporation surveyed the Australian supply of the skills needed for the next-generation submarine, its 250-page report did not mention the car industry once -- despite so much of that industry being next door to the announced site for the submarine project. Instead, it largely found those skills in the engineering contractors that serve our major onshore and offshore resource projects. All that is surely obvious: were the industry a repository of advanced skills, its workers would face few difficulties in shifting to other employers.Rather than having capabilities highly prized in the economy as a whole, nearly half the industry's workers have no post-school qualifications whatsoever. The local labour markets in which it operates are anything but Silicon Valley: they have low rates of school completion, families for whom English is not a first language, and compound sources of disadvantage. And while many of its workers have trained on the job, the skills they have acquired are rarely readily transferred elsewhere.That is why the adjustment process is so painful. Merely in the past two years, for example, the direct employment associated with GM Holden's South Australian operation at Elizabeth has declined by one-third. The results are visible in an effective unemployment rate more than twice the national average. It would be nice to think those are merely transitional problems, but life isn't like that, especially in a country with high minimum wages. And when a full shutdown occurs, the consequences for communities will be grim, as falling property prices lock families into places with few jobs and even fewer prospects.Yet pouring more subsidies into the industry is no answer. If the goal is to help the communities at risk, it is hard to imagine a less efficient way of doing so than paying for all the inputs consumed in making cars to assemble vehicles people don't want to buy. And that inefficiency is compounded by futility. Already, the subsidies granted in the past five years have gone largely into wage increases. Sure, the unions know that only accelerates the shrinkage, but they also know high wages mean high redundancy payouts when the end comes, and that those payments will be underwritten by taxpayers.Ultimately, this is the precipice to which past follies have led. For there is a brute truth the Australian protectionists understood: you cannot both cripple local producers with an industrial relations system incapable of withstanding international competition and allow consumers untrammelled access to the world market. Faced with that choice, they had no hesitation in sacrificing consumers, and compromising our prosperity to boot, for the sake of regulating the labour market.Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard wanted to have their cake and eat it. They imposed a 19th-century industrial relations system on a 21st-century market in the midst of enormous structural change. When the consequences came home to roost, they threw taxpayers' money they didn't have at a problem they couldn't solve, while making promises they could never keep. As reality bites, local communities will pay the price. 

Holden worker Damien Griffiths says it is time for the Federal Government to back the company's long-term future at their Elizabeth production facility in Adelaide. "Employees have made the call to have a pay freeze and get rid of some of our entitlements," Mr Griffiths, 32, says. "Now we need the Government to come on board."Mr Griffiths is sharing his story on the day of Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane's visit to the plant for crunch talks with Holden executives and state politicians.Mr Griffiths has worked for Holden for 13 years and has never considered a future without the car maker. He built a home in Munno Para West about six years ago. "I built this place with the thought I'd stay there (at Holden) forever. I have no intention of moving (jobs). I have a family of five and a mortgage, and that's pretty much the story of all the people there."Mr Griffiths says workers are proud to contribute to a company synonymous with Australia's manufacturing history. "Holden is a big name in Australia, not only in Elizabeth. It needs to stay around... it's an Australian icon."

With the Ford factory slated for closure in 2016 and Holden requesting a funding boost to avoid the same fate in 2016, the debate as to whether the Australian government should continue its support for the car industry is back in focus. One missing piece of information useful in this discussion is how Japan developed its automotive industry policy.Many well-known Japanese brands dominate the global car industry, with names such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi and Subaru. It is therefore difficult to imagine that car manufacturing was one comparative advantage that Japan did not have in its early post-World War II years.Japan was a latecomer in the automobile industry, and in the aftermath of a defeated nation, the country lacked both the capital and technology know-how that the US and Europe already had. Labour was abundant and unemployment was high, domestic savings were insufficient to fund a capital-intensive car industry.Consumers had little cash, and demand for cars was practically non-existent. Locally produced cars cost 40 per cent more than imported cars even behind a high protective barrier. This led Naoto Ichimada, the governor of the Bank of Japan (Japan's central bank) in 1950 to declare that Japan's resource endowment was ill-suited for car manufacturing.He argued: "It makes no sense for Japan to spend time and effort to nurture an automobile industry. Now is the age of international division of labour. America can make quality cars cheaply. Let them make cars!"Some of the problems confronting the Japanese car industry in the 50s were similar to the challenges we face in our industry now. So how did Japan grow to become globally competitive, despite its initial lack of capital and a very small domestic market providing little economies of scale? "Not because of public policy" was the consensus opinion.The role of industry policy was merely coincidental at best. This proves to be a misguided opinion. Researchers drew the wrong conclusion because they examined and evaluated industry policies that targeted the final assembly industry. Japanese auto manufacturers/assemblers, of which Honda was a prime example, openly defied the directives imposed on the assemblers by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. This gave the impression that Japanese auto assemblers were successful in spite of public policies.A crucial industrial policy that has escaped the due attention of researchers was the Provisional Act for the Promotion of the General Machinery Industry (or Provisional Act) enacted in 1956. This policy turned the Japanese automobile industry into an international success story.The upstream components supplier industry was the target of industry assistance in the 1950s. It, more so than the downstream assemblers, generated the bulk of employment for the Japanese economy. Many of them developed cutting-edge technology and became global brand names.Take Denso for example, it is among the world's top auto components suppliers. It employs 132,276 people worldwide. With an annual sale of $US36 billion last financial year, it is bigger than some Japanese assemblers such as Mazda, which has an annual sale of $US22bn ($23bn).Yet Denso started as a small-medium supplier firm in 1949 with no economies of scale in a small domestic market. It grew big and profitable rapidly, which the firm acknowledged were the beneficial effects of the Provisional Act. Vehicle assemblers like Toyota and Honda also profited from the positive externality provided by innovative firms like Denso.In Australia, we find ourselves once again at a quandary of deciding whether industry assistance should be given to the automobile manufacturers/assemblers. Is it not about time we investigate how we might be able to draw valuable lessons from Japan's experience with the Provisional Act?Evelyn Leung Anderson is an honorary fellow of Australian Catholic University and is writing an upcoming book: Automobile Tales Retold. 

Had the Rudd Government consulted anyone in the car industry about the sudden and radical changes to the Fringe Benefits Tax rules it would have been warned against the catastrophic impact.Instead a decision based on incorrect data announced without warning has seen about 300 people clear their desks in the past three days alone.Unless the Rudd Government does the right thing and reverses the FBT changes instantly hundreds more jobs will go next week too, and new-car sales will continue to dive.The most perplexing aspect is that it is a massive own goal. Contrary to creating a new tax that would affect drivers of luxury cars, the majority of those affected are public sector workers.A study of 100,000 novated leasing contracts by the Australian Salary Packaging Industry Association found State and Federal Government public servants represent the largest portion (33 per cent) ahead of those in charities and public health (28 per cent), police and teachers (21 per cent) and then the private sector (18 per cent).Having interviewed public sector workers affected by the changes, I’ve seen the result of this mess first-hand. Steve Dickson, 51, who works in education in West Australia, currently owns a Kia Sorrento SUV and had ordered a Hyundai Santa Fe SUV six months ago. But he is due to take delivery under the new rules.“The changes have put me in a bind. I purchased the new car on the understanding that I would be leasing it on a salary packaging arrangement. I’ve contacted the dealer to try to pull out of it but I’ve got a signed contract. So I’ve got to come up with the cash now.“If I had of known the FBT rules were going to change I would have just kept my old car. To pull the rug out from under my feet is just unbelievable.” There is no doubt there is scope to review the current FBT regulations on cars.But why not increase the rate of personal use from 20 per cent (as it was until Tuesday) by 5 per cent each year for five years, so people can see the changes coming and can plan accordingly? Anyone not happy with the arrangements can fill out a logbook if they feel hard done by.What the Rudd Government has miscalculated most, however, is that the current system is not a rort. People who have taken up the offer are law abiding citizens taking advantage of a system put in place and sustained by successive governments.It has in fact been one of the massive drivers of new-car sales over the past decade. And how much extra revenue has that created?This reporter is on Twitter: @JoshuaDowling

Every time I see a young P-plate clown laid back so far in the driver’s seat that he can barely reach the steering wheel, with the stereo blaring so loudly that he will be unable to hear emergency vehicles’ sirens, I get very irritated very quickly.These jokers are usually driving very slowly – chiefly because they barely have control of their cars – so it’s unlikely that they will ever get into trouble with the law.Because in this day and age there's one offence for which a driver is far more likely to get booked than any other. Exceeding the speed limit.As almost all policing – if policing is the right word – of speed limits is now done by robots there is no-one to spot these laid-back louts, leaving them to pose along in their dangerous way.It’s not just these noisy idiots with their blaring stereos that get away with murder – and I don’t use the word murder lightly – the clowns who scream in an out of multi-lane traffic also make me angry.They almost invariably get away with it because police patrol cars are a rare sight these days, or are parked behind a bush while the drivers catches up with their paperwork and listens to the financially lucrative sound of the speed camera raking in the ‘bad’ drivers.Chopping dangerously in and out of traffic is usually done below the speed limit, so again there's little chance of the fools being booked.Same with the idiots who use mobile phones. I see them every day, indeed it’s not hard to spot dozens as they wander all over the road at speeds well below the limit endangering the lives of others by composing and/or reading text messages, dialling numbers or simply shouting into the phone to make themselves heard over the sound of the radio and the traffic around them.This latest nonsense of mounting mobile phones on a special bracket inside the windscreen directly in front of the driver makes me wonder if the world has finally gone mad. Apparently this is not only legal, but encouraged, because it means the phone is hands free.But speed cameras can’t pick up mobile phone users either. Nor can they pick up inattentive other drivers who are checking their paperwork, looking at the street directory, telling a hilarious joke to their passengers that involves plenty eye contact. Speed cameras can’t spot people who aren't wearing safety belts.These thoughts crossed my mind last night as I watched yet another Australian police minister on television blaming speed as the number one cause of road crashes. Their numbers worked out to something like 70 per cent of fatalities being due to speeding.A nonsense figure that flies in the face of research showing that about 95 per cent of crashes are primarily caused by something other than excessive speed.I do long for a return to the good-old-days, when we had police officers on the road making sensible decisions about each individual case as it happened. And who had the ability to offer leeway on traffic laws when that was the intelligent thing to do. Then, and only then, will we start to see a significant drop in the road toll. 

Before you sputter coffee at the screen, hear me out. I've driven a number of the new generation electric cars in the last couple years, in Australia, Europe and Japan.The most recent test drive was in a Nissan Leaf. Nissan Australia has just dropped its price to a semi-affordable $39,990 driveway, from now until the end of October 2013. That’s down $7000 on the previous drive-away deal.Electric cars are kind to the environment, although just how kind they are depends on where their electricity comes from. Australia's coal is pretty dirty stuff and any electric car running on power generated from it suffers as a result.Thankfully, cleaner electricity is becoming more common by the day and quite a few consumers are putting their money where there mouths are by paying extra for it.However, while the typical petrol and diesel engine is about 25 to 30 per cent efficient at best, electric motors have efficiency in the range of 90 per cent. This gives them a huge leg up in the clean-air stakes.The really good news is that these upcoming electric cars are a lot better to drive than the older ones we have driven over the last three decades.Because the new generation cars have grunt - lots of grunt! Not the sort of deep-down, gut-tingling, smile-inducing grunt you find in a Holden Monaro 350 or Falcon GT, but they have a lot more punch off the line than you might have expect when you get that pedal to thump the metal.Particularly if it’s a sports electric like the Tesla Roadster, it can do the zero to 100 km/h in 3.8 seconds - pure supercar acceleration of the type only a handful of petrol engines can achieve.This grunt is due to the torque characteristics of electric motors, which put out their very best in the way of Newton metres at ridiculously low revs. Hit the pedal on the right in any electric car and you get instant action. You think you've driven responsive petrol engines in the past? Wait till you feel electric action.All this occurred to me as I put together a news story on the next generation Porsche Panamera. While it’s a plug-in hybrid, not a full electric, it’s capable of running on electricity alone for reasonably long distances. And has heaps of the aforementioned torque.But the best is still to come. As more and more people switch to electric cars there will be more and more petrol left for all of us guys who just love to drive big cars with large petrol engines creating lots of noise and action. And that have plenty of personality with a capital P.On the subject of noise, electric cars are the most boring method of transport on the face of the planet when it comes to aural output. They have this quiet little humming sound and not much else. There has been talk of fitting them with special audio systems that could put out your favourite exhaust note, perhaps even some tyre-squealing noises to really confuse people.Change the CD or chip and you could have a range of sounds – your ’57 Chevy one day, a screaming F1 V8 the next, or how about a Harley on full throttle? The possibilities are endless!Let's face it, the hottest of our old-style V8s don’t really make good daily drivers, so we need something else to use as a grocery getter and kid transporter.And if you're out for a cruise in your hot petrol-powered beast and some clown criticises it, you can tell them about the neat little electric machine parked on the street outside your garage. But don’t mention the electric car’s grunt, they just wouldn’t understand... 

After talking tough earlier in the week, the SA Premier and the boss of Holden had stopped their sabre-rattling in the lead up to yesterday’s meeting to discuss the manufacturing future of Holden and the jobs of its factory workforce.All was calm until the former Ford executive Jac Nasser told a business lunch in Melbourne on Thursday that the end of the Australian car manufacturing industry may be “inevitable”.Nasser’s comments understandably raised eyebrows, splashed headlines and almost overshadowed Holden’s meeting with the SA Government. But not enough attention was paid to the real point Nasser was trying to make.Nasser, a Lebanese-born Australian who worked his way up through the ranks at Ford’s Broadmeadows office before he went on to run Ford of Europe and then Ford globally (1998 to 2001), has one of the most informed opinions on the car business.“It would be a very sad day for Australia but it unfortunately looks like it could be inevitable,” said Nasser, who is now chairman of mining company BHP.He was referring to the eventual knock-on effect of lower factory outputs at Australia’s three car factories, which would make it difficult for suppliers to maintain economies of scale.“As soon as you have a reduction in the scale of domestic manufacturing -- let's assume one of the three decide to exit Australia in terms of manufacturing -- then you end up potentially with a sub-scale supplier infrastructure. And once that happens, I think it's a domino effect.”He then neatly spelled out the challenges facing the car industry: “You've got an exchange rate that's at … a 30-year high, you've got higher costs in Australia, you've got excess capacity in the automotive industry worldwide, you've got a very weak currency in Japan, and you've got a weak Euro. And when you put that mix together it's very difficult then to expect a relatively small but talented Australian automotive industry work its way.”It may not have been Nasser’s intention, but he gave a fresh authoritative voice to a sensitive issue. Why, for example, has the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries been so silent on the issue of government funding negotiations for local car makers? Why has Holden been forced to lead the charge and fight for the industry’s survival -- at great risk to its image?And so, against the backdrop of Nasser’s grim reality-check about the future of the industry, Devereux and his senior Holden offsiders walked into the SA Premier’s office on Friday morning. Before the meeting, Devereux described the automotive industry as a “contact sport” and that the summit represented “half time”. In other words, an opportunity to regroup.But Premier Weatherill clearly saw it as an opportunity to renegotiate. The SA Government didn’t take its $50 million off the table, as it had earlier threatened, but said it plans to make changes to the fine print of the deal (none of which were disclosed, incidentally, and neither side was giving any clues).So the upshot of all this? Holden workers are no closer to securing their future beyond 2016. And the negotiations, as they say, are ongoing. This is one game that's definitely going into overtime.This reporter is on Twitter: @JoshuaDowling 

Holden has been planning for the downturn in demand for the Commodore for some time. The sales graph for the past 10 years looks like a slippery dip. But what’s really thrown sand in Holden’s face -- and now cost the jobs of 500 workers -- is the unexpected shift away from its Cruze small car.The Cruze, which was imported from South Korea until Holden did a deal to build it locally from 2010, was supposed to be the company’s saviour and help it prop up production at the Elizabeth car assembly line. But despite the Cruze overtaking the Holden Commodore in the sales race on several months -- it had a neck-and-neck finish to 2011 – not enough Australians are buying it.There are more than 26 rivals in the small-car class. Holden reacted last month by introducing a revised version of the Cruze starting at $19,490 -- the cheapest locally-made car in 21 years -- and loaded it with extra equipment. But it may have been a case of too little too late, having had its hopes crushed by a massively undervalued Japanese Yen.The Japanese-made Mazda3 has been Australia’s top selling car for the past two years and is still market leader so far this year. For the past two months, Japanese car makers filled the top-three selling positions for the first time in Australian automotive history.As harsh as this sounds, Holden had little choice but to announce these job cuts today, because it is trying to make the company viable for a manufacturing future which it says will run at least to 2022. Sadly, there are more cuts likely in the coming years -- on the production line and in the engineering ranks – until it finds the right size of workforce to match genuine consumer demand.This reporter is on Twitter: @JoshuaDowling 

The Australian car industry may be on its knees but our choice of new cars has never been as vast -- or as cheap -- as it is today. And we're living it up.The strong Australian dollar and a Yen that has been deliberately weakened by the Japanese government have created perfect conditions for local buyers.For example, the latest versions of the Toyota Corolla, Nissan Pulsar, Mazda3 and Toyota RAV4 cost the same or less than they were in the late 1990s and early 2000s -- even though the cars are loaded with more equipment.Another stark example: Honda Australia has reverted to sourcing some of its cars from Japan rather than low-cost Thailand where it imports most of its vehicles from -- because it can get a better deal.Using the Toyota RAV4 as another example, in 1994 the cost of the first Toyota RAV4 was equivalent to 40 weeks earnings. In 2013 the cost of a new Toyota RAV4 is equivalent to less than 21 weeks of earnings.Over the past 20 years the CPI has risen 64.8 per cent. If car prices increased in line with the CPI, the most basic Toyota RAV4 would cost more than $47,600 today.Now consider import tariffs. They were at 27 per cent in 1995; they’re now 5 per cent for most countries except North America and Thailand with which Australia has Free Trade Agreements and therefore have a 0 per cent tariff.“There is no place that I’m aware of in the free world that has the number of brands per 1 million sales as Australia,” says the boss of Nissan Australia, William Peffer. “There are low barriers to entry, anyone can compete. I think the ultimate winner here is the customer.”There are more than 60 brands in Australia competing for 1.1 million annual sales, compared to about 40 in the USA (which has a market of about 14 million) and the UK (which has a market of about 2.5 million).Holden is hurting most as a result of the current market conditions. “The sharpest prices we’ve seen in decades have been driven by interventions by foreign central banks,” says Holden director of government and corporate affairs Matt Hobbs. “It’s an issue that Australian government needs to be aware of. We have not seen this sort of currency pressure since the 1970s.”This reporter is on Twitter: @JoshuaDowling 

The VF Commodore is the first substantial upgrade to the VE model launched in 2006 and must sustain sales until an entirely new car replaces it early in 2017.Holden is believed to have spent about $400 million on the VF, which focuses on installing modern electronics and safety features while raising cabin quality at the expense of wholesale exterior changes.Holden chief Mike Devereux said the VF would challenge preconceptions about Australian-made cars. “The VF Commodore really is a class above,'' Mr Devereux said. “No other car created in Australia is as technologically advanced."“It will offer levels of quality and sophistication to rival some of the best cars in the world.'' The VF debuts features previously unique to imported cars such as automatic parking, a head-up display which projects information on to the windscreen, and collision-warning systems.With almost $40m from the government's defunct Green Car Fund, Holden has also taken measures designed to improve fuel efficiency, such as installing electric power steering and lightweight aluminium panels.Mr Devereux said that during its four-year production run the VF would put $2 billion back into the economy through jobs, the supplier base and logistics. He expected it to appeal to Commodore loyalists and attract “a new breed of discerning customer who wants higher levels of luxury and technology''.The cabin has been thoroughly redesigned to address criticisms that the VE had poor ergonomics and a downmarket interior. Holden has fitted a new instrument panel and it describes the central control cluster as “a contemporary piece of modern electronics''.Redesigned seats, better materials and ambient lighting are also ingredients in the debut example, a top-end Calais V. “It's a carefully cohesive design which places emphasis on rich, tactile materials and technical refinement,'' design director Andrew Smith said.The VF aims to reverse a 25 per cent sales slump for Commodore last year, when it found just 30,500 buyers. Holden spokesman Craig Cheetham said that the company was aiming for a significant increase in demand when the car reached showrooms mid-year, although it did not expect the VF to reclaim the best-seller spot for Commodore, which the car held for 15 years until 2011.The VF also adds another dimension to Holden's small-scale export program, with sales of a V8 model to the US badged as the Chevrolet SS. That car will be unveiled at the first NASCAR race meeting of the year at Daytona next weekend and General Motors expects to import at least 5000 a year. Holden already sells a specially equipped version of the long-wheelbase Commodore, known as the Caprice, to the US as a police car.