Shock bidder for Lang Lang

The Belgian automotive entrepreneur who tried to buy Holden’s Elizabeth plant in 2016 is now interested in taking over the Lang Lang proving ground from VinFast.

carsales has learned Guido Dumarey investigated purchasing Lang Lang last year when General Motors offered it for sale in the wake of its decision to shut down the Holden brand.

Back then the Vietnamese automotive start-up was the winning bidder, paying $34 million for the proving ground that had been a core component of Holden’s vehicle engineering and development since it was built in 1957.

Last week it became public VinFast had decided to cease operations at Lang Lang and put the site up for sale, less than a year after purchasing it.

This followed its decision in May to shut its Port Melbourne R&D centre a little over a year after it had been established.

In both cases the closures have been blamed on the COVID pandemic. Well over 100 staff – many of them former Holden engineers – are out of work as a result of the decisions.

Dumarey confirmed his interest in Lang Lang in a brief phone interview with carsales.

“I am still interested, that is not the question,” he said.

The Fox family and its Linfox business were another interested party the last time Lang Lang was up for sale.

Already the owner of nearby Phillip Island racetrack and an automotive proving ground at Anglesea (on the other side of Port Phillip Bay to Lang Lang), LinFox  declined a request to clarify if it would again be interested.

carsales has established there is at least one more business entity with automotive industry connections that investigated purchasing the site last time and it may do so again.

We also understand there was also a potential bid being developed 12 months ago by a consortium of wealthy exotic car owners who considered turning the proving ground into a members-only private racetrack, similar to Monticello Motor Club in New York and Ascari in Spain.

This plan is understood to have floundered based on a business case that did not stack up.

The Dumarey bid for the Holden factory in Adelaide, where he planned to continue building the Commodore under another name as a prestige model, was revealed by carsales in November 2015. It was rejected by GM in early 2016.

Dumarey, an engineer by trade, has made a specialty out of buying automotive businesses in financial strife, or earmarked for closure, and resuscitating them.

The assets of his business, Punch Group, include a former GM transmission plant in France and the former GM propulsion centre in Turin, Italy, which specialises in diesel and electronics technology.

Dumarey is close to sealing a deal to buy the Nissan plant in Barcelona, Spain, where the Navara ute and the closely-related Mercedes-Benz X-Class have been built.

Punch has made a binding offer for the facilities and Dumarey has talked about turning it into an electromobility centre with an emphasis on hydrogen.

He has enlisted former Aston Martin boss and Nissan executive Andy Palmer for the project.

Related: VinFast exits Australia due to COVID
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