IN THE wake of its dealer nationwide cull, Holden has vowed to deliver a Dealership of the Future model for its remaining outlets by December after confessing that its network’s presentation has moved well past its use-by date.

The majority of existing dealers have not been offered visual updates since the mid-to-late 1990s when Holden revised its Lion logo and badge font, and continued with facades painted red.

Holden has since changed its font and has ditched red-coloured themes, as reflected in its sales and marketing communications – but not in dealerships.

“(The plan is) to modernise the dealership not only on the outside, the signage, the showroom experience, the technology, all of that will happen (and) it happens in parallel,” Holden’s executive director of marketing Mark Harland revealed.

“We’re going to look to do some pilot stores and some things along the way. I can’t give you any specific dates yet because there’s a lot of things that go with that. I would say by year’s end, we’ll have a pilot store that we could show.

“All the point-of-sale type things, interactions … those have either positive or negative (responses) and I think we’re building positive equity impacts on the brand.”

Mr Harland also admitted that although a future line-up of Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) products had not yet been finalised, he expected that the distribution of high-performance Holdens would continue.

“The distribution of those (new-generation) vehicles and the branding of those vehicles would go through the current network of Holden Special Vehicles dealers,” he said.

“I think in the dealership, the distribution model (of HSV) will still be there. Working with Holden Special Vehicles as a company will continue. Distributing them through that network will continue.”

Mr Harland, whose family previously ran a General Motors (GM) dealer in his Canadian homeland, praised existing dealers for their tenacity over tough years for the Holden brand. However, he said the plan now was to ensure the look and feel of dealers matched its product overhaul and fresh marketing campaigns.

“Coming from a guy who’s grown up in a dealership, dealers are great at what they do and our best dealers are great entrepreneurial businessmen and women,” he said.

“But as a brand that wants to modernise and a brand that’s going to have some of the best GM (General Motors) products to offer, I want to make sure that the dealership experience, the facility and the staff is best representative of our brand and that’s where I feel very strongly.”

Such new products would also be aimed at ensuring a Holden line-up within dealerships looks cohesive, something the executive director of marketing admitted the brand has failed at in recent years.

“The thing that we’ve got going for us is that we have design and engineering that’s still here,” he said.

“One of the things I’m a big believer of is if we have a showroom that looks like an orphanage then we will fail as a brand. And we’ve done that in the past, we’ve looked like an orphanage.”

During the late 1990s as Holden transitioned out of its model-sharing phase with Toyota, it came close to achieving an aligned line-up of European Opel-sourced Barina, Tigra, Astra, Vectra and Zafira, in addition to the Australian-made Commodore and Japanese Isuzu-derived Rodeo.

However, GM’s acquisition of Daewoo in the mid-2000s saw the company sell South Korean-made products from that brand (including the Captiva still today) alongside European and Australian vehicles with different styling cues.

Although Holden has continued to source some products from Europe, such as the Astra hatchback, and from South Korea, such as the just-released Astra sedan, the latter received a front-end redesign for the Australian market only.

Mr Harland insisted the same would occur for future Holdens sourced from various parts of the world and GM global brands as diverse as Chevrolet, GMC and Opel.

“Wherever the vehicle is sourced, wherever the homeroom is … (our team) is going to be directly engaged (and) it includes the design of the vehicle,” he said.

By Daniel DeGasperi