Holden production bows out on a high

Holden’s Adelaide manufacturing line will bow out as the best in the world this week, after recording the highest quality results of any General Motors plant.

The last-hurrah versions of the Commodore, which will be completed today ahead of a ceremonial event on Friday (October 20), achieved a “right-first-time” rate of 98 per cent during August, benchmarking the Elizabeth facility as the best of any GM plant in the world this year.

Moreover, it is understood the soon-to-be-defunct Australian operation bows out with the highest levels of quality across 69 years of domestic manufacturing. For reference, the same “right-first-time rate” was closer to 65 per cent at the introduction of the VF Commodore.

“Elizabeth is categorically building the best quality cars it has ever built, across all internal and customer metrics,” a Holden spokesman said. “Elizabeth has won a number of GM regional and global awards in recent times and is among the very best quality plants in the GM world.”

The statistic leaves a positive impression on Holden’s remaining 950 manufacturing employees, who will be out of a job come this Friday, shooting down any notion of the last-hurrah models being “Friday cars”.

Holden follows the lead of Toyota, which shuttered its Altona operations earlier this month with an unprecedented quality record intact for the locally-built Camry.

“We have an auditor team in TMC – a quality audit team -- and they come to Australia once a year to check out our quality,” Toyota Australia boss Max Yasuda said earlier this month.

“I think the last audit was done at the beginning of this year, and we achieved the best ever quality audit by this audit.”

Holden is yet to reveal details of its last Australian-built car, though social media leaks suggest it will be a red SS-V Redline sedan.

No actual shifts will take place on the final day in the life of the Holden Vehicle Operations, which has been the sole source of Australian-made Holden vehicles since 1994.

Holden is in the final stage of a six-month process to sell off its Elizabeth manufacturing site in the north of Adelaide, which will become a “master-planned innovative business park”.