Holden is just about pull the protective film and plastic seat covers off the new ZB Commodore, hitting showrooms in a matter of days.
Hosted by Holden across a two-day launch through Melbourne and south-eastern regional backroads, the message to consumers is to “take it for a drive” before casting opinion.
Holden director of communications Anna Betts says Holden has had to take a hard line to not be a one-trick car company.
“Commodore is an important launch for us, we need to continue to establish ourselves as a sales, engineering, design and technology company,” she explains.
“We’re no longer the Commodore company, we can’t rely on one product. It’s still very important, but we need a more even spread across passenger, SUV and small cars.”
Betts says the rest of Holden’s range has the weight of expectation on it for 2018.
“Our focus in 2018 is on growth, and that means selling more cars than last year, across a number of key segments,” she says.
“Colorado needs to perform, Astra needs to perform and so does Equinox.”
Holden’s expected sales volume is set to be fairly evenly split across the light commercials at 30%, passenger cars 35% and SUVs will make up another 35%.
With Holden outwardly saying it was not resting on Commodore sales in a market that wants SUVs and LCVs, Betts says the company’s ethos behind locally tuning the mid-size E2 global platform remained steadfast.
“Commodore needed to have the driving performance for our roads and our conditions, and there are plenty of strong opinions about how it will perform,” she says.
“We want people to have a drive first, experience it, and then have their opinion. We can say it as many times as we want, but customers need to feel it.”
To bolster Holden’s efforts developing vehicles that suit Australian roads, the $13 million redevelopment in the Lang Lang proving ground was obvious during day two of the Commodore launch, with the high-speed banked bowl section under resurfacing, and a planned rebuild of several facilities on-site.
Holden vehicle development manager Jeremy Tassone says local development is the hallmark of the cars his team have been developing, especially on the Commodore/Opel Insignia platform.
“We’ve emphasised driveability over a ‘fuel economy at all costs’ attitude,” he explains.
Opel’s design of the base vehicle was contributed to by other markets which would see local variations including the Buick Regal, Vauxhall Insignia and of course Commodore.
Both Holden design and engineering were involved with the platform from as early as 2013.
“Australians have grown up with Commodore and that’s meant we need to deliver something that’s great to drive, that’s why we come to work.”
Drivability for Holden engineers starts with the bones of the car, before shifting to the engine.
“It starts with the architecture and being brand new we can use the latest manufacturing techniques and materials.”
“All-wheel drive and V6 was important to us, but we’ve also got the premium 2.0-litre engine from Europe,” he explains. “It’s the best base engine we’ve ever had in the Commodore, so we’ve got Europe’s best engine as our base engine.”
The higher-end of the range gets a clever all-wheel drive system and more performance-focused V6.
“There’s not much of the old V6 left in its character, it’s responsive and has more power and torque than before and the nine-speed transmission has really transformed it,” Tassone adds, “Holden put its hand up to design the architecture to take the V6.”
Rural buyers across both private and fleet will take interest in the 2.0-litre diesel with eight-speed transmission with 400Nm which Tassone says “is no slouch, and we have even seen 5.0l/100km on the highway.”
The VXR performance variant was also developed by Holden at the Nurburgring, using General Motors’ dedicated nearby facility.
“We have unique suspension, steering and chassis tune for Holden and I think we’ve nailed it,” Tassone says.
The VXR gets 230kW and 370Nm of torque and a nine-speed gearbox which is coupled to a world-first ‘Twinster’ all-wheel drive system that uses a twin-clutch rear differential system that gets torque vectoring.
“It’s a really unique system which does away with a conventional rear differential, with a clutch pack on each side, delivering torque independently to either side.”
Even the tow bar was developed locally to meet Australian Design Rules.
Dirt development was also important for the new Commodore, which Tassone says was an interesting conversation with European counterparts.
“In Germany they’re very good at tuning for ice and snow, and bitumen, but gravel roads don’t get so much emphasis compared to us,” he reveals.
“Within engineering circles, they say ‘Well we just slow down on dirt roads’, but for our customers who travel hundreds of kilometres on gravel daily, to think they’ll slow down to 30km/h doesn’t make sense.”
In fact he says our local teams have very much taught their German colleagues a thing or two.
“We’ve had to make sure we’ve brought the globe along with us to teach the importance of gravel, that ABS has to function really well, that it has to bite in, traction control has to allow good acceleration, and ESC has to make sure the car responds linearly and doesn’t get pulled off the road.”
The 2018 ZB Commodore in liftback, Sportwagon and higher-riding Tourer goes on sale at Holden dealers nationwide from late February.
