Not long ago Holden was the only profitable division of GM, sadly times change fast. The last Commodore is a cracker. I remember Ian Callum congratulating Mike Simcoe on a great design.

I bought a 78 Holden Kingswood in 1980 and drove it every day till 2005. It is still around town owned by an enthusiast. The reason I sold it was it had no power steering, no automatic transmission and no aircon. Where I am in Australia it sometimes hits 45'C in summer and that gets a bit trying without aircon. Holden made good cars and I don't see anything taking their place. I certainly don't want diesel, DSG transmissions or complicated electronics. Nor do I want a tiny buzz box powered by a lawnmower engine with a hair dryer bolted on top.

With regard to there being more auto than manual Cavaliers surviving my guess is the autos are bought by older people who do fewer miles, tend to keep cars for longer, thus more survive.

I think that is generally true. Most of the Pug 205s which appear for sale are now GTi's. Autos are a good fraction of the rest, usually with 2K or 3K per-year mileages.

In the future if GM no longer have Opel /Vx as the design side for compact/small cars,

where will the future Daewoo/Chevrolet Korean Models come from?

Back to buying old tech from Mitsubishi etc etc & re-skinning the car?

The Daewoo/Chevrolet models now use current GM platforms, have done for a generation

After Opel/Vauxhall abandoned Gamma for the Corsa and used Fiat's SCCS, total responsibility for future Gamma development was transferred to GM Korea (ex-Daewoo) and the Karl/Viva and Mokka use it, both built in Korea although Mokka is now built in Spain as well.

The Delta (Astra) and Epsilon (Insignia) platforms developed by Opel/Vauxhall have been evolved in the US and now used, or about to be used, by Chevrolet, Buick and Cadillac for all their FWD and FWD/AWD models.

By closing Holden development/production and selling Opel/Vauxhall, then GM will have slipped from world #1 global car maker to a regional US/China car company that's stuggling in it's home market - when the China bubble ends, so will GM.