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Holden’s involvement in top-level professional motor racing is officially over. In a quirk of timing, the marque’s presence on track outlasted its existence in the showrooms by two years. It was back in early 2020 when General Motors announced that its famous Australian manufacturer would cease to exist at the end of that year.
While it was a shock given Holden’s longevity, it wasn’t given the sales numbers. Local manufacturing had been dead since 2017, and people had abandoned rear-wheel-drive, four-door sedans for SUVs. The Commodore had become a rebadged version of the German-made Opel Insignia.
The flow-on effect was that the days of the Ford-versus-Holden rivalry in Australia’s top-level Supercars series were suddenly numbered. While people had stopped buying Holdens, they hadn’t stopped supporting them …