Walkinshaw produced around three times as many vehicles in 2022 than HSV did in its biggest year with Holden, with the Victorian engineering outfit helping drive a manufacturing boom in Australia.
Walkinshaw – which had been a Holden and HSV partner since 1998 – is now home to more than 1000 employees in its Clayton facility working across its various product lines. CarsGuide understands that, at its peak, HSV was home to around 500 employees.
But it is the number of cars the outfit is now producing that is truly staggering. Last year, Walkinshaw was responsible for 12,025 vehicles, including the remanufactured Ram 1500, Chevrolet Silverado and the Volkswagen Amarok W Series.
In its biggest year, which was 2008, HSV produced a total 4866 vehicles. And keep in mind Walkinshaw now has contracts with Mitsubishi (the Triton XTreme) and Toyota (the Tundra) yet to come online.
While companies like Walkinshaw and Premcar (the latter working with Nissan on the Warrior program) are keeping Australians employed in the vehicle assembly space, it’s also evidence of the country’s shift in vehicle tastes — and Walkinshaw’s ability to capitalise on it.
As a result, Australia has emerged as a remanufacturing centre of excellence, with brands trusting their vehicles will be engineered to, or beyond, OEM standards.
The Toyota Tundra will be the next vehicle to leave the Melbourne facility, with the Japanese brand confirming it is the first time an outside body has been trusted to remanufacture Toyota vehicles.
“We’re substantially re-engineering Tundra for Australia, adopting local parts such as the steering column and rack, accelerator, brakes and shift lever from the LandCruiser platform,” Toyota sales and marketing chief Sean Hanley told us recently.
“This is a full-scale re-engineering project that requires everything you’d expect from Toyota to meet our strict requirements for QDR – that being quality, durability and reliability.”
The company will then put 300 examples of the Tundra into customer hands as part of a large-scale testing program that will help fine-tune the remanufacturing process.
“This is the first time we’ve ever done something like this inside of Toyota Australia”, Hanley says,
“Walkinshaw are doing (the conversions) for us in Australia, and this is all part of Toyota’s commitment to quality.”
Keyword: Better off without Holden! Walkinshaw now building THREE times the vehicles it ever was with HSV and the Commodore - and that's before the Toyota Tundra!