General Motors says it is hopeful of winning a lucrative contract to supply re-badged Holden Commodores to US law enforcement agencies. By RICHARD BLACKBURN.

Holden could soon be exporting Commodores to the United States again.

The company’s billion dollar export program ground to a halt at the end of last year after Holden’s parent company, General Motors, axed the Pontiac brand in the United States. Holden was selling re-badged Commodores as Pontiac G8s in the States.

But in an exclusive interview with Drive.com.au at the Frankfurt motor show yesterday, General Motors boss Fritz Henderson said the company was making good progress with a plan to sell the Commodore to US law enforcement agencies.

“We’ve been working on a package for police applications. I just think that’s going to work. We’re pretty optimistic about it and that product will be sourced in Australia,” he said.

And he didn’t rule out a wider role for the car in General Motors’ plans going forward.

“It’s a global architecture, it gives us options in the future but right now you’d say, near term, no,” he said.

The law enforcement contract could prove lucrative for Holden, with some estimates suggesting the deal could involve tens of thousands of vehicles a year.

Holden executives are believed to have been working on a proposal to sell the car to the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPD is looking for a replacement for its fleet of ageing Ford Crown Victoria sedans, which will be discontinued next year.

Other agencies, including the Canadian Mounties, are also believed to be showing interest.

Holden remains tight-lipped on the subject, though says it has continued to look at alternative export plans.

"Fritz [Henderson] is obviously intimately aware of Holden and our capabilities," says Holden spokesman Scott Whiffin. "It's fantastic to have this kind of endorsement from the guy in the big chair.

"When the Pontiac deal fell through we said then it was a shame, it was a great car, but understood the reasons for it. And we said then we would get up, dust ourselves off, and find other opportunities. And that work has pretty much been going on since that [Pontiac G8 axing] was announced."

Holden shipped 36,500 re-badged Commodores to the US last year - about two-thirds of the company's total exports and almost a third of its vehicle production. The deal was believed to be worth $1 billion.

Holden has been searching for alternative export programs ever since, but in June GM shut the door on plans to revive the car as a Chevrolet Caprice.

It was thought the GM plan to import cars from Australia to US enforcement agencies would meet with strong opposition from GM’s new owners, the unions and the Government, in light of the mass plant closures and job losses in the United States that followed the company’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

But senior GM exectuive Bob Lutz played down those fears in a blog on a company website in June this year.

“While the large (rear-wheel-drive) cars may be made in Australia, they are an integral part of GM, contain US-built engines and transmissions and numerous other components, and are so ‘American’ in character that I don't believe the law enforcement agencies would have any problems with the assembly origin of the vehicle. Plus, they'll love it,” he said.

If it comes off, the deal will be good news for workers at Holden’s Elizabeth plant in South Australia, which has been running at roughly half its capacity since the Pontiac deal ended.

The company cut one of its plant shifts in May, with some workers put on week-on, week-off work arrangements to avoid redundancies.

There will be a further boost to the plant from the end of next year, when Holden begins to build a small car at the plant.

But despite the good news, Henderson said the engineering role Holden had in the General Motors organisation was likely to shrink.

“It will be reduced from what it was, say five years ago, but it will still be a key role,” he said.

Prior to the economic downturn and the focus on more fuel efficient vehicles, the Australian operation was the engineering hub for GM’s global rear-wheel-drive program.