Next they'll be after meat pies and kangaroos. Surely not the football.

Although the future has long been foreign, what was once dubbed "Australia's own car" - the Commodore - is set to be produced by a French-owned company.

US President Donald Trump will claim a huge triumph after US auto giant General Motors announced overnight it will offload its struggling European operations to French automaker PSA Group.

Wheels Magazine was quick to leap on the consequences for what was once a hero of patriotic advertising jingles in Australia, reporting an assurance the new French-owner would supply Holden with Commodore vehicles from 2018.

That ad - just as an aside for those who don't remember the 1970s - went like this, but was actually a knock-off of an American Chevrolet version in the same era.

Holden has announced an October deadline to end car production in Australia, part of an industry shutdown that will also see Ford and Toyota stop manufacturing cars in this country.

General Motors plants in Germany for the Opel brand are to produce Commodores from 2018, with the plants now to be sold to the French PSA Group as part of a deal valued at US$2.3 billion, according to the Washington Post.

PSA Group own the brands Citroen and Peugeot.

Mr Trump has demanded US car companies return manufacturing operations to American soil, complaining bitterly about offshore production.

But despite the heavy dose of nationalist rhetoric that always swirled around the car industry, the reliance on global supply chains look set to remain, especially with China, the world's largest car market.

Liberte, egalite, fraternite, and all.