Today, Holden announced that the Spark micro car had been dropped from their Australian range.
This was confirmed by Mark Flintoft, Holden’s head of product communications. “We’ve stopped offering that car,” he said, and when asked why he replied “look at the volume in that segment”.
Mark has a point – only 667 micro cars were sold in March 2018, compared to 17,054 small cars (the segment that the larger Astra competes in). Of those 667 cars, just 67 of them are Holden Sparks (10% market share) while a whopping 484 of those are Kia Picantos (73% market share).
The removal of the Spark is part of a push to encourage more buyers to purchase an Astra, which can commonly be seen for under $20K drive away – not a very big step up from the $18,300 plus on-roads list price of the top-spec Spark LT CVT.
What are you thoughts? Will you miss the Spark as much as I will? Let me know below.