In November last year, Richard Erskine's daughter was taking his seven-month old son for a swim at Sydney's Coogee Beach in the family's 2018 (bought new) Holden Captiva. After the swim, she put her handbag on the driver's seat with the keys inside while she went around to attend to the baby in his car seat. As she moved around the car, the Captiva self-locked. It was a 30 degree day. The baby and the keys were locked in.

In true Australian spirit, passers-by brought their own blankets to cover the car to keep the temperature down. Richard's daughter was distraught. The car was locked and the baby inside. No possible entry. She called the NRMA. Thirty minutes later the patrol person forced entry and got the baby out of the car.

Richard pleaded with his dealer to get Holden to take immediate steps to notify all owners of the danger of self-locking, recall all the cars with the affected keys and fix the problem. GM responded to Richard directly with one of the greatest mumbo jumbo letters in Australian automotive history.

"You raised concerns that (2018 Holden Captiva) has faulty locking with the Remote Keyless Entry (RKE) function," (no Laura, Customer Resolution Executive, Holden Customer Care, Richard raised the concern that his seven month old son nearly died in the car because it self-locked) "and requested Holden to rectify a fault with this feature. We take this opportunity to refer your Vehicle's Owner's Manual and under the section 'Keys, doors and windows, pg 26 under heading 'Passive Locking' states not to leave the Remote Keyless Entry (RKE) transmitter in an unattended vehicle."

Do you think Laura said: "Sorry to hear about your son Richard"? Or "Let's look into why one of our keys went mad and locked a baby boy in one of our cars in 30 degree heat"? Nup.

I emailed Daniel Cotterill, General Manager, Communications at Holden, who basically said "The 'passive locking' feature is optional and can be turned off" but other than that our (Holden) letter to Richard says it all. And he's right. As all of us who read and write this column over the years have learned, most car companies are even more cynical, uncaring and greedy than the Wolves of Wall Street.

In the last 16 years Holden has had 10 CEOs. Of course, that couldn't be the reason that late last year Holden had its lowest monthly sales since 1948. Things were equally bleak at the 10 days of Scottsdale. With six auctions houses offering 17 per cent more cars, overall sales ($356m) were down 3 per cent on last year.