Here’s why the Australian car industry really died - and who killed itThere was a time when Australian car makers understood what Australian car buyers wantedFord, Holden and Toyota blame everyone and everything (except themselves) for the demise of local car making. There's part of the answer, I suspect. Fully loaded, these impressive small cars are much cheaper than an entry-level Falcon.Billions of donated taxpayer dollars have allowed these three manufacturers to luxuriate through a series of breathtaking, appalling and epic product planning failures. But its fate was sealed because the local parts supply base could not survive solely on orders for Toyota.

With low – or zero – import tariffs over the past decade, Australia became flooded with foreign cars that were either cheaper to buy than local models or better equipped, or both.There are now more automotive brands sold in Australia than in mainland Europe, the UK, the US or Japan.

The Federal government blames the opposition, and vice-versa.

“Basically it’s a CO2 scheme in name only,” said one.

a car company like Tesla could have come from down yonder. We each pay over $500 a year in additional fuel and maintenance, according to government estimates, because our cars are so dirty and inefficientAnd yet consumers are told by government and vested interests that any move to introduce such standards would amount to a “carbon tax on wheels” and blow out the costs of new cars. At their peak, Holden built 165,000 cars in a calendar year (2004), Ford built 155,000 (1984) and Toyota built 148,000 (2007). It's a victim of what IMF chief Christine Lagarde calls the ogre of deflation. “But it might make it easier to implement a proper scheme if the debate is about how a scheme works, not whether we have one.”Attempts to introduce emissions and fuel standards by then environment minister Josh Frydenberg were abandoned after the Murdoch media launched a furious attack against the proposal. The doors have just closed on the Australian car manufacturing industry forever. As the article states a luxury maker could make a viable case while help from the government should help subsidise the plant. Also cited have been market fragmentation and reverse economies of scale.For those of you who want to make this into a political football, it’s not a lack of government support that killed this industry. The Australian car industry has introduced new voluntary CO2 emissions standards for the next decade – to 2030 – as Federal regulations continue to lag 11 years behind world’s best practice. The statistics were gathered after the closure of the Mitsubishi car factory in 2008.“We know from the research that a high proportion of manufacturing employees go on to be long-term unemployed,” the report said. Always baffled me that Australia has kept relying on foreign automakers, instead of starting something itself. Australia’s vehicle emissions standards are at least a decade behind Europe, but the car industry has now adopted new targets to reduce the CO2 of its new vehicle fleet. It's easier to 'dig stuff out of the ground' than it is to 'make stuff' and this has driven up costs. It is shaping as an extinction event of Australian jobs, an entire industry being wiped out. But those Aussie hero models could be created only because, once upon a time, fleets and families bought the regular saloons in the tens of thousands each year.

Making cars in Australia is a joke – on the Aussie taxpayer.Thousands of workers like these will lose their jobs by 2017 as a consequence of the poor choices Holden, Ford and Toyota have made - aided and abetted by both sides of Government and you - the Aussie taxpayer But last year, all three sold a combined total of just 87,000 locally made cars.Fifteen years ago, the Holden Commodore led the market with close to 90,000 sales per year. In short, no one is thinking about manufacturing in Australia anymore.

But it’s still a work in progress.

Non-fulfillment of Unique selling point (USP) When Tata launched this vehicle the USP was advertised as it will be world's cheapest car. He pointed to …

It’s all political buck-passing.