Australia is about to lose its car manufacturing - regardless of what side of the political spectrum you support this is a sad thing - but it simply was not standing on its own two feet and was over reliant on taxpayer support to survive.
While all that sad news was breaking I read a very interesting article which showed how Volkswagen make incredibly high margins from their prestige brands - for every Porsche they make around $23,000 profit (18%) with Bentley similar and Audi (including Lamborghini) about $5000 profit or an average of about 10% - compared with only $800 or 2.7% for their mainstream like Golfs and Passats
This made me wonder if Australian car plants might have stood a better chance of survival if they had lifted out of "mainstream vanilla" car production where, lets face it, the Australian domestic market is not big enough and production not large enough to really compete with the mega plants in Korea, Japan and Europe.
There was a glimpse of what could be done when Holden designed and made the Monaro in Australia- (about 10 years ago I think) - a true muscle car but generated a lot of sales overseas - maybe if Holden had seen the niche they could have went on to be a specialist Aston Martin /Porsche/Ferrari/Lotus type manufacturer. Mass market car manufacturing was always doomed in Australia unless supported by government - but specialist, high specification, top range, low volume with very high margins vehicle manufacturing may very well have succeeded. Wouldn't it have been great to have an iconic world beating Australian car marque?
NOTE: The article was in Business Week and can be seen here: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-13/volkswagen-pockets-23-000-when-you-buy-that-new-porsche
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