The famous Lang Lang Proving Ground that was home to Holden’s vehicle development since 1957 has been sold to its third owner, an unnamed defence contractor, casting the facility’s automotive future into doubt.
Situated southeast of Melbourne en route to Phillip Island, the 2157-acre facility – nearly four times the size of Albert Park – was created to best replicate all Australian road conditions and was in use since the development of the Holden FC.
Following the closure of the Holden brand by American parent company General Motors, the facility was sold to Vietnamese carmaker VinFast for over $36 million. Its plans to launch an Aussie engineering hub stalled at the lights and the company listed it for sale in 2021.
Between then and now, VinFast had been renting the facility out to various carmakers for development work including Mitsubishi, JAC, BYD, and GWM who used it to tune their vehicles for Australian conditions. Local outfits Walkinshaw and Premcar had also made use of the facility for testing and development work.
However, the facility’s automotive future is in doubt following this purchase, with its new owner already giving Chinese automakers the boot from the facility.
Despite GWM Australia hiring former Holden engineer Rob Trubiani to head its local tuning program and announcing in July 2025 that it had secured “permanent residency” at the Lang Lang Proving Ground, the company has been instructed by the facility’s new owners to vacate it within weeks.
In a statement provided to CarExpert who first reported the story, GWM Australia chief operating officer John Kett said that the brand was “advised that they would no longer be able to use the facility after the middle of May”.
Although the new owner of the facility is yet to publicly come forward, Drive reports that Victorian Government documents link the sale to a company representing DefendTex, a Melbourne-based contractor that develops unmanned vehicles.
Featuring a 4.7km four-lane circular high-speed bowl, a 4km ride and handling course, and a 1.7km noise testing road among its 44km road network, the facility was utilised for millions of kilometres of testing every year in its heyday. The first stage of its construction cost around £200,000 which equates to over $7.7 million today.
Following its 63 years under Holden’s ownership, numerous vehicles brought to the Australian market have been tested and refined at the facility including the current Mitsubishi Triton, Haval H6, GMC Yukon, and most recently the JAC Hunter in February this year.
Until now, Lang Lang has been home to one of three automotive development facilities in Victoria alongside the Australian Automotive Research Centre near Anglesea, owned by Linfox but regularly used by Toyota, and the You Yangs Proving Ground owned by Ford.
