Holden has transitioned to an engineering company, Mitsubishi has already closed shop and now Ford Australia has discovered that the engineering for
a new RWD platform will be done in the US. Ford Australia can only survive in Australia as a manufacturing concern with government subsidies. It has no export market and the only niche vehicle it manufactures for the Australian market is having the engineering done in the US.
Ford Falcon via Automatt's flickr photostream It is not bad news for Ford Australia, most likely they will thrive by ditching their manufacturing concern and just importing cars for the Australian market. After all numerous car manufacturers make a lot of money in that manner; Toyota, Honda, etc.
Asking for government subsidies to keep the factories open would be a bad business decision. Shedding the high capital cost of a manufacturing operation will be of benefit to Ford. Just the same as the government throwing money at a factory to keep it open in order to save a small number of jobs is equally wasteful. The time when manufacturing offered well payed, stable, middle class jobs is gone.
