Holden or Chevy?

I’m not sure if you’re aware (unless you’re from Australia or are a car nerd) but in Australia one of the biggest car brands Holden. It’s part of the GM family and has been since the 1930’s. It’s got a very interesting history, but since it became a GM subsidiary it has built both KD’s (Knock Downs - basically models from other countries sent as a flat-pack to Australia and built in factories there) and own-designed models. In more recent history it was the Aussie version of Opel, in the same way Vauxhall is in the UK. However, in 2005 that changed and GM-Daewoo Chevy’s started showing up in the line up. Now, foreign cars are nothing new in the Holden line up. Over the years they’ve taken models from Nissan, Toyota, Suzuki and others, however this was a more longer-term strategy as over the years less and less Opel’s and more GM-Daewoo’s turned up in the line up. Now, pretty much every car with exception of the Commodore/Calais (home-grown car), Colorado (Isuzu pick up) and Combo (Opel small van) are GM-Daewoo’s.
GM-Daewoo’s are now rebranded as Chevy’s in most places in the world (one exception I can think of is Vietnam where they still sell them as Daewoo) but the manufacturing/design is done by GM-Daewoo in South Korea.
However Australian’s aren’t fooled, they know about this and know that they share models with the Chevy brand, however what surprises me when I look around the cities I’ve been to in Australia is the amount of cars that have had their grilles/trunk badges replaced. Gone are the Holden badges and Chevy badges have taken their place. Anyone who know’s anything about badge engineering will say it’s no big deal, people have always ‘up-spec’ed’ their cars. But this is an iconic Australian brand, and Australians are normally so vehemently patriotic when it comes to Aussie brands and will extol virtues where often there aren’t any, so for them to give up on an Aussie brand with such heritage surprises me. And as an outsider I find it even more confusing that they’d want to ‘up-spec’ they’re cars to GM’s equivalent of a budget brand. I can understand if they were putting Caddy or Pontiac badges on their cars, but not Chevy.
Who knows, maybe in the next decade we’ll see the posing Lion be exchanged permanently for the golden cross. Only time will tell.