‘I shed a tear’: Former Holden employee reacts to news car brand will be axed by end of 2020

US car giant General Motors has confirmed the iconic 72-year-old Holden brand is set to be axed in Australia.

News the brand was set to be retired broke on The Rumour File last week.

The brand will be ditched at the end of 2020, after years of declining sales.

The announcement comes three years after Holden ended Australian manufacturing.

Former GM Holden Motorsport PR manager, Gerald McDornan, said he “shed a tear” when he heard the news.

“I heard a month ago it was going to happen, and you don’t expect it to happen, even though you get very good word that it is,” he told 3AW’s Tom Elliott.

Mr McDornan said the decline wasn’t inevitable when Holden stopped manufacturing in Australia, but the poor way the change was dealt with contributed to its demise.

“In 2015 they brought some people in that weren’t car people. They had people from Singapore throwing their hats into the ring telling us what was going to happen,” he said.

“They changed the brand.

“From 2015 on was really when the sales started to plummet.”

Today’s announcement is “scary” news for motorsport, too.

“Holden did a deal with the Red Bull Holden racing deal for two years. They announced it at Bathurst last year. Obviously if the brand and the sales are finished this year there’s no point having the team,” Mr McDornan said.

“For Supercars, the category, it’s a very scary day.”

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Image: Bloomberg / Getty