V8 Supercars'’ powerbrokers have denied its red army of Holden teams will fall victim to the financial shockwaves of General Motors’ collapse into bankruptcy earlier this week.
As
Auto Action closed for press on Monday, the US Government announced that GM had officially slid into bankruptcy – making it the largest industrial bankruptcy in US history.
Once the world’s largest corporation, GM joins Chrysler in Chapter XI bankruptcy – a condition allowing the organisation to continue trading while it undergoes restructuring and debt management in order to become profitable again.
Despite the bad news, V8 chief Tony Cochrane and Holden Motorsport Manager Simon McNamara both insisted that V8 Supercars is safe and denied the news would seriously jeopardise Holden’s motorsport operations – at least for the short term.
“The teams that rely on some of their funding from Holden in Australia are well and truly locked in for this year,” Cochrane admitted to
AA.
“Holden and our teams see our sport as being a tremendous platform by which they sell particularly their HSV models but also other Commodore models in the range.
“In the short term, I don’t believe it’s going to make one bit of difference to us and of course in the longer term I, like every fair mind in Australia, really hope Holden in Australia will continue on for many, many years to come and be an on-going successful business.”
Cochrane said the sport is well-positioned to survive potential further funding cuts from the manufacturers.
“For probably the best part of the last five years, we’ve being taking ourselves off manufacturer support as a sport in a general sense because quite frankly the sport couldn’t grow if we just relied on manufacturer support, irrespective of whether it was just Ford or Holden or Ford and Holden and three other manufacturers,” admitted Cochrane.
“So today we probably have, as a sport in an overall sense, only about 15 per cent or so of our total revenue has come from the manufacturers. As a sport, we’ve set ourselves up in a pretty strong position to be able to withstand any changes in manufacturer support, whatever they may be.”
With GM jettisoning brands Hummer, Saab, Vauxhall and Opel, as
AA went to print it remained to be seen whether or not Holden features in GM’s future. McNamara however assured the local icon is strong enough to have earned its place in the GM family.
“We're not going to have new owners; we're going to stay as we are and just keep going,” McNamara told
AA.
“Holden Australia is a pretty strong organisation. [Holden CEO] Mark [Reuss] is a very impressive bloke to have here at this time.”
McNamara said Holden will continue to race in V8 Supercars despite the economic uncertainty: “We race in Australia for a number of different reasons for our local product and we'll continue to do that.
“At the end of the day, Holden is completely separately run and independent in Australia. The Asia-Pacific region has a significant contribution to the overall profit of the business so we're running business-as-normal and keep on pressing on as we are. We've got plans going forward for a number of years ... We're focussed on keeping going; we've got no major dramas here other than the usual economic business.”
And if GM hypothetically places Holden on the market, McNamara said the company’s new owners would determine the future of its V8 Supercar operations: “If it's a complete hypothetical, I guess we'll have to see what they think.”
By
Dylan Campbell
Photograph
: EDGE Photographics
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