General Motors New Zealand

General Motors New Zealand

Formerly	Holden New Zealand (1994–2020)
Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Automotive
Founded	4 January 1926; 98 years ago (1926-01-04)
Headquarters	Ellerslie, Auckland , New Zealand
Key people	Marc Ebolo (Managing director)
Products	Automobiles
Brands	Buick Chevrolet Oldsmobile Pontiac Holden Isuzu Opel Vauxhall Bedford
Number of employees	35 (July 2016)
Parent	General Motors

General Motors New Zealand Limited (formerly named Holden New Zealand Limited from 1994 until 2020), is a subsidiary of General Motors that distributes GM' motor vehicles, engines, components and parts in New Zealand.

This company was incorporated on 4 January 1926 to build and operate a local assembly plant in New Zealand. It was General Motors' first owned, not leased overseas plant. The plant began with the assembly of American GM vehicles – Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, and Oldsmobile, followed by British Vauxhalls five years later. Following World War II, British sourced Vauxhalls continued to keep the plant running together with limited numbers (restricted by currency shortages) of Chevrolets and Pontiacs. Buick and Oldsmobile were dropped. In the late 1950s the Vauxhall, Chevrolet, and Pontiac cars began to be replaced with Australian-sourced Holden vehicles and the move to the Holden brand was completed in the 1970s.

The assembly of vehicles ended in 1990 and thereafter the business became a distributor of complete imported GM vehicles and spare parts, mainly from Australia and Korea. General Motors began withdrawing from right-hand drive markets in 2017, leaving the United Kingdom, Japan, India and Thailand over the next three years.

With Holden new-car sales in its home country nose-diving to just 4.1 per cent of the Australian market by the end of 2019, General Motors announced on 17 February 2020 that it would be retiring the Holden brand and pulling out of the last remaining right-hand-drive markets. They also announced that GM's right-hand-drive assembly plant in Thailand had been sold to Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor.^[1][2][3][4]

As of 2022 General Motors New Zealand consists of three business groups, GM Specialty Vehicles (GMSV), Isuzu Trucks, and Holden Aftersales.^[5]