Once again, "not building what people want"...
The public has shown that it doesn't want large sedans anymore, not in sustainable, profitable numbers. V8's are meaningless to all but a vanishingly small number of enthusiasts...no one buys a V8 to "tow a horse float or a big boat or caravan" anymore...they buy four wheel drives for that.
Holden and Ford have been affected by something that overseas makers have been stung with many times over the years: not seeing which way the wind was blowing when public buying trends changed in large scale ways.
Commonest cars on the road now are twin cab utes, mid sized and smaller SUV's, and small and medium cars. That seems to be what people mostly want to buy.
Buyers are also way less "badge blind" than they used to be...people are far less likely to buy just one make (and maybe only one model from that make) year after year, feeling they need to be linked to that maker because they always drove one and daddy always drove one.
Potential buyers are also probably way better informed now than they ever were...people ask questions, the check reviews online, they research, and realise they don't have to be tied down to one model from one maker, and the car makers didn't see this coming.
Too many people also think that the majority of the motoring public...which is what makers rely on to sell profitable volume...are in any way interested in which end of the car is doing the driving, what the 0-100 time is, and what sort of a quarter mile time it will do. Good old boring Toyota realised long ago that if you give people "a car" that is reliable, does everything it says on the box, and just provides a good service to it's buyers in a no-fuss way, that people will buy them in droves, even if they aren't all that "exciting" or "fun" (86 excluded
).
Maybe the death of Falcon and Commodore is a sharp wake up call to the industry, that they have to look closely at what people
want rather than try to dictate to them what they
should want, when that car doesn't meet their needs or wants anymore.