Button car plan

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Original name	Badge engineered derivative
Ford Falcon	Nissan Ute
Holden Commodore	Toyota Lexcen
Nissan Patrol	Ford Maverick
Nissan Pintara	Ford Corsair
Nissan Pulsar	Holden Astra
Toyota Camry	Holden Apollo
Toyota Corolla	Holden Nova

The Button car plan, also known as the Button plan was the informal name given to the Motor Industry Development Plan. The plan was an Australian Federal Government initiative, intended to rationalise the Australian motor vehicle industry. Industry consultation had begun in 1984 with a proposed start date of 1985. The plan took its name from Senator John Button, the federal Minister for Commerce, Trade and Industry.

At the time of its inception, Australia's motor industry was heavily protected by import tariffs, harbouring the assembly of thirteen different models by various manufacturers. The Button car plan aimed to reduce this number to eight models, with the aim of forcing some amount of industry consolidation. The over-arching aim of the scheme was to make the motor vehicle industry in Australia more efficient by consolidation of resources, allowing the import tariffs to be gradually unwound. This in turn would theoretically expose the local industry to increased competition from imported products, fostering improvement in local vehicles and creating the basis for a competitive export industry.

The most obvious effect of the plan for the Australian car buyer was the appearance of badge engineered vehicles, where the same basic vehicle was sold by several different companies under different names. Other approaches included the Ford Courier and Mazda B-Series utilities utilizing Mitsubishi's 2.6 litre Astron four-cylinder engine, and a proposal to replace Mitsubishi's locally built Colt with a rebadged Toyota Corolla. This proposal however, never eventuated.

This sharing of models proved unpopular with buyers, and original models outsold their badge engineered counterparts.^[1] The last of such models, the Holden Apollo (Toyota Camry) was dropped in 1997. Rather than share locally-assembled models with other manufacturers, Holden, Ford, and Toyota decided to import fully built-up models from subsidiaries elsewhere in the world, such as Europe and Japan. Mitsubishi Motors had never shared models with other manufacturers, while Nissan ended car manufacturing in Australia completely in 1994.