Holden has steady hand on the wheel

The fourth Holden boss in two years says the company is in safe hands and is looking forward to "a period of continuity".

Briton Alan Batey -- who has been the head of sales and marketing at Holden for almost four years -- has been in his new role for less than a week after taking over the reins on September 1.

Speaking at the launch of the new Commodore V6 range, Batey said that Holden would remain on its steady course to recovery and that he is confident the company will weather the financial storm.

For decades Holden bosses have come from foreign General Motors postings. But while Batey's homeland is Britain, he at least has the advantage of almost four years worth of knowledge of Holden and its operations.

Batey replaced American Mark Reuss, who returned to Detroit earlier than planned to take up one of the top five positions in General Motors headquarters.

"What's important around the transition from Mark [Reuss] to myself is the continuity," Batey told the Carsales Network.

"I was lucky enough to work alongside Mark [Reuss] right through the building of our [recovery] plan and the [initial] execution of our plan. Our plan is not going to change. Times have been tough but we've got a plan and we're sticking rigorously to that plan."

For most of the past decade Holden has been run by execs with engineering backgrounds, with a focus on car design, development and manufacturing. Batey's expertise, meanwhile, has primarily been in sales and marketing.

"Mark and I came from very different backgrounds. Mark came from engineering and I've spent most of my business life in the commercial end of the business. But we really saw eye to eye very quickly around the key foundations of what is really going to make Holden great in the future."

He said that the priority for Holden now is rebuilding sales and profits.

Holden needs to generate cash in this part of its model cycle as it needs fund the design, development and engineering work on the next generation Commodore, due in late 2012. The company has cautiously forecast steady sales for the next 12 months -- rather than growth.

That said, Batey admitted Holden undercalled the strength of the Australian new car market this year and has ended up being short on stock. The Cruze small sedan is sold out for two months and the Captiva softroader is outselling its main rival, Ford's Territory.

The Commodore was the second best seller again in August, according to official sales figures, behind the Toyota Corolla for the second month in a row and fourth time this year. However, the Commodore is still Australia's biggest selling car when year-to-date sales are counted and it is on track to become our most popular car for the 14th year in a row.

"We're not going to walk away from that title," Batey said. "We've had a bit of a slowdown with Commodore while we were in run-out of the old model, but we've already starting delivering new V6s to dealers and we expect to ramp up [sales] very quickly."

Batey said the Commodore would continue to undergo continuous improvements rather than infrequent but significant updates. In other words, the car will continue to look pretty much the same but a lot of changes will take place under the skin as the company continues to chase fuel economy improvements.

"We want to look at what technology is available and get it into our cars as soon as possible," he said.

"Our customers have told us they love the look of the Commodore but they're concerned about high fuel prices."

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