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Australian car-making ends

CANBERRA, Australia - The Australian auto manufacturing era ended after more than 90 years when General Motors Co.'s last Holden sedan rolled off the production line in the industrial city of Adelaide on Friday.

The nation had already begun mourning the demise of a homegrown industry in an increasing crowded and changing global car market.

GM Holden Ltd. is the last of an array of carmakers that once included Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Chrysler and Leyland to abandon Australia in recent decades.

The Holden plant shut down after the last red Holden VF Commodore, a six-cylinder, rear-wheel drive sedan, left its doors, and 900 factory workers clocked out for the last time.

Technical manager Peter Allison had been employed at the Holden factory for 19 years and had once expected to stay there for the rest of his working life.

"If we're not Holden fans, we're cars fans. Building cars is what we love," Allison said.

Thousands of jobs in businesses that have supplied components and accessories to Australian auto manufacturers are also at risk.

Though it's a subsidiary of a U.S. automotive giant, Holden is an iconic Australian brand and has been a source of national pride for generations.

The name came from English immigrant James Alexander Holden, who arrived in Adelaide as a 17-year-old in 1852 and set up a saddlery business.

The family business evolved from horses and buggies when the automobile age arrived. In 1931 GM bought what was then called Holden's Motor Body Builders. Such was the brand recognition that the Detroit headquarters decided to keep the Holden name.

The first mass-production model of the brand that became known as "Australia's own car," the FX Holden, was built in 1948. A decade later, more than half the new cars registered in Australia were Holdens. The market was built on a reputation for cars engineered for rugged Australian conditions.

The reasons behind the demise of Australian auto manufacturing are numerous.

The first Holden cars were built in an era of high Australian tariffs and preferential trade with former colonial master Britain, which encouraged global carmakers to set up local factories to increase market share.

Australian import tariffs have since tumbled through bilateral free trade deals with car manufacturing countries like the United States, Japan, China, South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia.

High wages and a relatively small population of 24 million people living far from large export markets denied the Australian industry economies of scale.

There were exports, including the V-8 Holden Commodore that has sold in the United States since 2013 as the Chevrolet SS.

A decade of surplus federal budgets ended in Australia in 2008 with the global economic crisis. Car industry subsidies have since weighed heavily on the burgeoning budget deficits.

Holden, Ford and Toyota - the final three carmakers - announced their departures in 2013 when a mining boom made the Australian dollar for the first time stronger than the greenback. That made Australian-made cars increasingly uncompetitive.

In this undated photo, cars are assembled on the production line in Adelaide, Australia. General Motors Co.'s last Holden sedan rolled off the production line on Friday. Courtesy of General Motors
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