Podcast appearances and mentions of dave buttner

Today's download: Ford Ranger Raptor police car earns its stripes, Mercedes-Benz V-Class to get MBUX, here in June, and Holden boss Dave Buttner steps down.

Today's download: 2020 Citroen C5 Aircross Hybrid revealed, 'under study' for Oz, 2020 Mitsubishi Mirage teased: Can it win back sales in the city-car class?, Holden rules out seven-year warranty, 2020 Ford Mach-E: Mustang-inspired EV spied wearing minimal camouflage, Lexus Australia confirms CarPlay/Android Auto rollout, Volkswagen Caddy Beach axed as focus turns to T6.1 California, Rolls-Royce Cullinan Black Badge revealed

You can help support the channel, securely via PayPal >> Or Paste this link in your browser: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=DSL9A3MWEMNBW&source=url ‘Holden posts lowest monthly sales since 1948.’ Kinda says it all, really. Just 2863 sales in September - lowest result in 71 years. And that’s after Detroit disinterred and re-animated Dave Buttner - it was all very ‘Frankenstein’. Incidentally, February, April and July this year were also record monthly lows for Holden. I’m sensing a pattern. And that pattern would be that not even Deadpool’s dad, the former boss of Toyota Shitsville, can pump water out of the bilges fast enough. The iceberg was just too big... Expect more Holden dealership closures in coming months as the brand continues to slide further into obscurity. And whatever you do, don’t buy one - in an environment like this, you’re setting yourself up for a resale disaster. Tung Nguyen. And the Academy award for best male porn star name ever by a motoring journalist, goes to the Carsguide news editor, Tung Nguyen - yesssssss! Anyway, Deep Tung (as I would call Mr Nguyen if we shared an office) Deep Tung went on to transcribe Holden’s bullshit excuses for dropping the ball so badly in September. According to a Holden bullshit excuse monger, there was a delay selling some Colorados to fleet and rental customers. Deep Tung also transcribed this epic bullshit excuse: “...and a significant sell down of dealer demonstrator inventory as a result of our demonstrator clearance sale.” If a Holden bullshitter had ‘explained’ this to be, I would have retorted with ‘How ill-informed do you think I am?’ See, sales figures don’t actually track sales. Of course. The car industry is in fact a movie I would call ‘Bullshit Inception’ - it’s bullshit inside bullshit inside bullshit - little Russian dolls carved out of bullshit - all the way down to the quantum level. Sales figures actually track registrations. So, when a month looks like going bad, for a carmaker, the mother ship tells all its dealers to go out and register, like, 10 cars. If you’ve got 200 dealers, that’s 2000 additional registrations that get chalked up as sales, and they go on the books as demonstrators even though most never get driven. Then the mother ship pays the dealer a back-hander to sell the demonstrators at a discount, seeing as it’s no longer worth as much as a new car. So, essentially, that makes the carmaker look better in that month, but it engineers an even bigger slump the next month, potentilly, and it is therefore a very short-term sales strategy. So, if you’re a proper journalist, the pro tip there would be to call them on it. Because this is what happens when you cook the books in August and it bites you on the arse in September. Because the fundamental problem is the cat’s out of the bag on Holden’s appalling conduct vis-a-vis the factory closure almost two years ago today. Clever advertising can’t right the ship. I know this because Holden even released a brand new advertising campaign at considerable expense, detailing the joys of Holden SUV ownership. A Holden Heist, they called it. ‘This is how we SUV.’ (As if ‘SUV’ is a fucking verb…) Very nicely shot. Expensive. Stabilized rigs on cars. Couple of nice drone shot inserts. Wouldn’t be surprised if they dusted off three or four Arri Alexas or the Red Weapon Heliums. (It’s very good, production-wise. Almost Hollywood. But, at the same time, nauseating.) It’s a bullshit concept. They’re selling vehicles nobody wants. Under a brand they burned. Most of us know the real Holden heist involved the Australian taxpayer - and not even the most accomplished ad agency in the world could shove that down my throat and make it taste like fois gras…

This week Mandy Turner is in Sydney this week for the EV mega test (listen out for the EV podcast special!), and on the panel is Trent Nikolic and Tony Crawford. Geza emailed us at podcast@caradvice.com to ask if he should chip tune his 2014 Kia Rondo that he uses to haul the family and a camper trailer. In car news, Honda has officially announced it will be closing its UK manufacturing operations, the 2020 Ford Focus ST has been revealed, and pricing and specs have been released for the 2019 Volkswagen Touareg and Mazda 3. Tony talks about his review of the 2019 McLaren 600LT, and Curt Dupriez reviews the 2019 Hyundai i30 N Line manual. Josh Dowling talks about his drive in the Ford Falcon Holy Grail, and he also attended a media event where Holden boss Dave Buttner discussed the possible change in Holden distribution.