New Zealand - Upper Hutt - Vehicle assembly at General Motors - 1974 - National Publicity Studios Photo Holden New Zealand Limited - Named until 1994 as General Motors New Zealand Limited, was a subsidiary of General Motors of Detroit and distributes General Motors' 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, 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 since then the business has been the distribution of complete imported vehicles and spare parts, mainly from Australia and Korea. (Reference: Wikipedia) Top 10 NZ new vehicles sold in 2019 Ford Ranger – 9,485 Toyota Hilux – 7,126 Toyota Corolla – 6,804 Toyota RAV4 – 5,611 Mitsubishi Triton – 5,319 Holden Colorado – 4,747 Mazda CX-5 – 3,312 Nissan Navara – 3,305 Kia Sportage – 3,273 Suzuki Swift – 2,877 Top 5 EVs sold in 2019 Tesla Model 3 - 657 Hyundai Kona - 395 Hyundai Ioniq - 160 Volkswagen e-Golf - 107 Audi E-Tron - 92 (https://www.aa.co.nz/cars/motoring-blog/top-10-nz-new-vehicles-sold-in-2019/) --------------------- Image source: Vehicle assembly at General Motors, Upper Hutt National Publicity Studios Archives New Zealand Reference R24809065 AAQT 6539 W3537 142 / B5099 https://www.flickr.com/photos/archivesnz/30395605005/