OK, for all my Seppo mates, gather around while I educate you about things Oz. Over here, we have most of the brands of cars that you guys have, but most are imported.
The two most popular brands of cars that have been manufactured in Oz for most of the 20th century and still are made here are Ford and Holden. (Holden is GM Australia, better known as GMH) While many Aussies drive other brands, (Honda Mazda, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai etc) the Holden and Ford fans are still in the majority, and are pretty evenly divided.
The "Ford vs Holden" thing comes to a head in October every year when the "Bathurst 1000" race is run at Mount Panorama in New South Wales, to decide which is the better car. This in itself is a moot point as apart from the shape of the body panels, these hand built race cars have nothing in common with the cars available to mere mortals at the local Ford or Holden dealerships.
If you were born into a Holden family, the expectation was that you'd be a Holden man for life, and same for Ford guys. At school it was common for "Ford vs Holden" fights to regularly break out, among kids too young to have ever driven either car.
I guess I was lucky, I didn't belong to either camp as my father wasn't that interested in cars, we had first an Austin , than a Pontiac, then a Valiant (by Chrysler) a Morris, and then a Triumph in the 1970's. My folks still drive that thing around, but I did convince them to buy a Ford Station Wagon in 1985, which they still have as well, and it's still like a new car, as they prefer to drive the Triumph. The 27 year old Ford has just done 65,000 miles.
I've owned both Fords and Holdens, and while I lean towards Fords because I love small block Cleveland V8's, Holden builds great cars too. The last Pontiac's in the US were actually designed and built here in Oz, and sold here as the Holden Commodore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_G8With Australia's current love affair with SUV's, both Ford and Holden are losing ground to the Japanese and Korean manufacturers, and both GM and Ford have threatened to cease manufacturing in Oz if sales continue to drop. It's a pity that our two main political parties won't go the same way............. Which pisses me off.
