Lang Lang not a PR move

Tuning cars to Australian driving tastes not scoring positive public relations points drove the decision by General Motors’ to keep Holden’s Lang Lang proving ground and some engineering capability.

That’s the insistent claim made by GM consolidated international operations chief Stefan Jacoby and Holden MD and Chairman Gerry Dorizas when they announced the backflip at a press conference in Melbourne this morning (May 1).

Originally, GM declared it would sell Lang Lang and strip Holden of its engineering capability by the time manufacturing ceases in late 2017 and the company becomes a vehicles importer.

“It is not just a PR move,” said Jacoby.

“I think it is good news today for Australia. We maintain a strong pillar of our strategy here and of our capabilities in Australia and it is not just a PR move.”

Just what engineering capabilities will be retained by Holden are yet to be finalised, but Jacoby confirmed it will no longer have the ability to design cars from the ground up.

Currently, it is believed Holden employs nearly 600 engineers with around 130 of them at Lang Lang. It is thought that number will drop to around 70 in total.

The engineering operations will be retained alongside the design centre, which has been previously confirmed as continuing on after manufacturing ceases.

Dorizas, who has been in charge at Holden for two months, said the reversal came about as future strategy for the company was developed.

“We had a discussion and we have been working on our strategy here and we are bringing new products and we thought it was very important to also keep the proving ground to test our vehicles and to tune them to the Australian consumer tastes,” he said.

Added Jacoby: “Over the last couple of months we have developed our strategy for Australia. We see great opportunities with the global product program which we have in mind for Australia.

“We are here [changing] from a defence strategy over the last 10 years, where we lost market share, into an offence strategy. We believe we can gain market share and market position and with the kind of thought which we have within our strategy, it came up that we want to maintain our engineering and proving ground capabilities here in Australia.”

motoring.com.au revealed today that Holden design guru Mike Simcoe and global product development chief Mark Reuss played key roles in defending Lang Lang and Holden’s engineering ability.

Jacoby said the majority of Holden engineering work would be devoted to localisation of imports, but there would also be some international duties.

“You can have an ongoing development process around the clock by utilising Australia together with other facilities within the GM world; Korea for example, Brazil, or North America, Europe. It makes sense to integrate that engineering capacity in the global set-up.”

Jacoby and Dorizas also confirmed today that four new Opel models would be sold as Holdens from the first half of 2015, including high-performance Astra and Insignia OPC models relaunched and rebadged here as VXRs.

Holden would not comment on whether any interest has been expressed in buying the Lang Lang property before it was withdrawn from the market. However, motoring.com.au understands that Mercedes-Benz Australia/Pacific alerted its parent about its availability.