"We've got a new assignment for you. You're moving to Australia. The R32 GT-R must win Bathurst!"
These were the words with which Alan Heaphy, lately the team manager for Nissan Motorsport Europe, was given his mission for the 1991 season. Living and working in the U.K., he'd been steering Howard Marsden's works Group C sportscar outfit to ever-greater success, including pole at Le Mans in 1990. But Nissan's failure at last year's Bathurst proved the stone that set off an avalanche: in Australia, only one race mattered, and Heaphy was seconded Down Under to turn things around.
Serious Re-Engineering Since the Great Race had moved to its true home Mount Panorama in 1963, just four marques had ever won it, and two of those only once each: in 1966 the Mini Cooper S had run the bigger and heavier opposition into the ground, mostly by not needing to stop for fuel so often; and in 1985, the Jaguar XJ-S had given Tom Walkinshaw his first Mountain triumph, also by not needing to stop for fuel so often (ahem). But apart from these aberrations, every Bathurst whether Series Production, Big Banger Group C or Eurotrash Group A had been won by either a Ford or a Holden; not once had it been won by a Japanese car.
Nissan were determined to be the first, but it wasn't going to come easily. It was no secret that the Mountain was some of the most demanding tarmac in the world, but last year's shock win for Holden had driven home just what it would take. In the modern era, you needed a car that could be driven flat-out for the entire distance, standing up to all the stresses the Mountain could throw at it – the suspension loading up into Sulman Park, the hard braking at the bottom of the Chase, the hard acceleration again out of Hell Corner, the ever-rising engines temps as bugs and dust encrusted the radiator – all of it and more, for six-and-a-half hours straight.
The problem was, the GT-R as delivered wasn't capable of that.
You have to remember that our touring car category in Australia was very competitive and the thing is, a Japanese-spec racecar wouldn't win here. It wouldn't be quick enough against the the Ford Sierras and Holden Commodores.
So we had to homologate the parts that we wanted on the car with the FIA through CAMS to make the racecar a lot better, and that took a lot of work. We used a lot of Australian suppliers to help us get it right. – Fred Gibson, Auto Action #1787
Added Paul Beranger, manager of Nissan Motorsport Australia: "NISMO in Japan wasn't too impressed when we told them we needed to change their pride and joy."
That process had begun in 1990, but once Heaphy was ensconced as Gibson Motorsport's Lead Team Operations Manager, shortly after the Eastern Creek enduro, it kicked into overdrive.
When I arrived here I think at the end of November, I went straight to New Zealand where the team was racing at the Wellington street race and it was a good opportunity to see some of the problems the car had. The car was suffering badly with brake issues, not so much the handling, and there were other components that were just underdone.
They were running a number of Australian made components at that stage. They had their own front and rear uprights that were locally made, wishbones and a number of other components that were made in-house. They also had the Holinger gearbox that replaced the NISMO gearbox as they found it to be unreliable. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787
As the old saying goes, when there's hard work to be done some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all. Motor racing tends to weed out the latter two groups pretty quickly, but even by the absurd standards of the business, Fred Gibson had managed to assemble a group of true workaholics. Later Holden Racing Team chief Jeff Grech was one of them, and he remembered the GT-R vividly:
I loved working on them, but they were a mechanic-eater. We were the first to get to the track at six o'clock in the morning and we'd be the last to leave. You had to change both turbos, they were just a nightmare, very complex to service and maintain, but there was a lot of clever stuff. – Jeff Grech, AMC #107
But even for this crew, the off-season of 1990/'91 was remarkably intense. Before the flag fell for the first ATCC round in February, they not only had to sort out the issues in chassis GT-R 002, they also had to build a whole new car – chassis 003 – after Skaife had destroyed 001 in qualifying for the Adelaide Grand Prix support race. Building a new car while simultaneously carrying out a test and development programme ready for the new year was a Herculean task, but fortunately, as the pressure ramped up so did the support from Nissan.
The main problems with the Australian GT-Rs were the brakes, which tended to overheat with hard use; the cylinder blocks, which were cracking; and the turbos, which were failing as they tried to make the immense power required. For 1991 the rules on brakes had been relaxed, so that was the first problem the team tackled. The process was sped up by one of Heaphy's tricks from Europe: real-time telemetry, courtesy of some clever gizmos by PI Data Acquisition, a small company established by a group of Cambridge professors. The team had invested up to $400,000 into this promising new technology, and it paid off almost immediately.
During the Group C Prototype programme I had spent quite a bit of time with the PI data logging system. We had developed this system during the prototype programme and I brought one of those back with me. The engineer at the time was Ross Holder, he and the guys fitted the PI unit and sensors into chassis 002.
With the PI system in the car and the data we got from turbo speeds, brake temperatures and other items, we could basically say, "Change this, check that and do that". We spent almost every day bar Christmas Day modifying bits and pieces in the workshop to get the car up and running to go testing. Then we were out at Calder, I don't know how many days we spent out there, but testing brakes, testing oil coolers and that sort of thing.
The team were running cooling fans on the wheels which was to help with the brake cooling. I was concerned the fans weren't doing what they were supposed to do and believed that they were only covering up the open face of the wheel.
I remember when we fitted the infrared sensor near the disc, you could see the temperature go up and up and with the wheel fan on you could see it come down a little bit, but with the wheel fan off you could see it come down more rapidly. It showed that the brakes ran cooler with no fans and fans were never used again.
The development was just a vertical line, it really was. I mean over the period of late December/early January, the changes to the car and the data information that we got was invaluable. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787
Brake cooling was further boosted by some custom rims. Following HRT's lead, Gibson commissioned Kevin Drage of Castalloy in Adelaide to design and manufacture a new kind of 18x11 alloy wheel, lighter and stronger than anything currently on the market.
There were a number of different versions of the wheels because I think we were the first team to run a hollow spoke, a hollow centre as well. The early development wheels were an issue, with some cracking and keeping them tight, we used to have to torque them up to 800 foot-pound of torque to stop them coming undone. Kevin was constantly making changes to try and make them stronger and lighter. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787
One idea that popped up during development was a reversible flap located in the brake duct behind the front bumper. When racing on high-speed circuits where engine oil temps would soar, the duct could be bolted in one position to send air to the oil cooler; for tighter tracks that required heavier braking, the air could be ducted to the brakes instead.
The Group A engine was already running a nodular steel crank, beefier rods,
titanium valves and retainers, plus Cosworth pistons, but a problem familiar to GT-R tuners was the straight-six layout itself. Under high power the engine could produce enough torque to twist the block until it cracked around the head bolt holes and into a particular water gallery. Up until Pukekohe, Gibson had been using a new block every race because of this. New engine mounts helped, but what was really needed was a redesign of the bracing inside the block itself, something that could only be implemented at the factory in Omori. Five upgraded blocks were made specifically for the team, virtually overnight, but it would be a couple of races before they arrived in Australia.
While they were there, the Gibson embassage took the opporunity to talk to their turbo suppliers at Garrett. Quality control had been determined the main cause of their Garrett T25 turbochargers failing in 1990, so the team had invested in a balancing machine so they could assemble their own rather than have to buy complete units from Japan.
The team built their own turbochargers in-house. Myself and two other team guys went to Japan to talk to them about the cylinder block because at that stage we were splitting cylinder blocks which we believed were twisting when torque was applied.
We took one of our turbochargers with us and they had an engineering guy from Garrett at NISMO at the time we were there. He looked at that turbocharger, pulled it apart and reckoned our guys were two years in front of them with development work.
We had a 360 thrust bearing turbo and we had a balancing machine that used to suck the air out of everything and the guys could run and balance them up to about 120-130,000rpm. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787
Another bugbear was keeping oil in the sump, which required an intricate solution.
It was very complicated. It had a breather out the top of the engine that went into a separator tank and back into the sump. It even got the point where the final catch tank also had a pump that put the oil back into the sump. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787
Having experimented with triple-plate carbon clutches with the old HR31 in Europe, the idea had been transferred across to the R90CK Le Mans cars, before returning to touring cars now with the GT-R. A triple-plate carbon clutch fed the torque of the engine into the familiar Holinger 6-speed gearbox, which was retained because it worked very well. The HS6 became the flagship product for Holinger, adopted by many motorsport categories worldwide including the future V8 Supercars – where it would remain a staple until replaced by the current sequential unit in 2009. The team was soon exporting Holinger gearboxes to NISMO to hand out to Group A teams in Europe and Japan.
The Holinger box was about $18,000 back then and the NISMO box was $33,000. The GT-R produced so much torque that it could destroy the Nissan box with little effort!
The car didn't really need a 6-speed, it had plenty of torque you could have got away with less and it still would have won races. The same 6-speed was a good thing for other teams, particularly those with normally-aspirated engines. Teams like Perkins Engineering, HRT and many others used this gearbox. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787
Only a few Nissan parts remained in the Gibson GT-Rs, including the transfer case, front driveshafts, front diff and the rear diff, which initially was a Nissan LSD. It was reliable, but it it too would be replaced later in the year.
The wheels, the suspension, the gearbox were all local. They [NISMO] made the cylinder blocks, but the Electromotive engine management system was done for us in America.
We had to do so much in-house ourselves – the engines and the whole thing. The only thing we didn't do was the Holinger gearbox. We got new things cast and I still have all the old drawings for that. All those things we got done to make it a better car were done because we had good people. Having the people that engineered the car, designed some of the equipment for the car, was very satisfying. The people made the difference.
We did it all ourselves, which was still very expensive, but not as expensive as getting all the bits from Japan. Our budget wasn't huge. We were very fortunate to have good sponsors as well as Nissan Australia. We were struggling when we first did GT-R because we didn't have enough money to do the job properly. We were lucky to have cigarette money come along [in 1992] because it was a very expensive car to run. – Fred Gibson, Auto Action #1787
Nemesis So the new VN Commdore's big problem heading into 1991 was the Nissan; the Nissan's big problem, by contrast, was the economy. There were a number of factors pushing it downwards at the dawn of the 1990s: Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait creating yet another spike in oil prices; the U.S. treasury deciding the economy needed cooling after the cocaine bender of the 1980s, maintaining high interest rates to ward off inflation; and a downturn in the U.S. housing market caused by nothing more malicious than the Baby Boomers all having their houses now, and the Gen-X buyers that followed them happening to be much fewer in number. But the big factor for Australia was that the Japanese economic bubble of the late-1980s had finally started to burst, leading the country into what they still call "the Lost Decade". It would bring on things like the notorious Fuji banking scandal, which was profoundly shocking at the time but now reads like little more than a preview of basically all financial news post-Enron (F1 fans might remember the pretty blue Leyton House cars of this era; team moneybags Akira Akagi was jailed for his part in the Fuji Bank conspiracy).
Globally, share prices dropped 25 percent; here in Australia, however, they fell 40 percent. At the time we were Japan's single largest supplier of coal, iron, wool, sugar and beef, so if the Japanese economy tanked ours wouldn't be far behind. And sure enough, by September 1990 the data showed Australia's GDP had dropped 1.8 percent, and on 29 November then-Treasurer Paul Keating delivered the line that would follow him into eternity: "This was the recession we had to have."
There were business failures, bankruptcies, negative equity, falling investment and mounting unemployed. All the debt-financed business carpetbaggers like Russell Goward, Christopher Skase, Abe Goldberg etc were put out of commission. Australia was as Keating put it "de-spivved". Inflation was exorcised out of the Australian economy. It was a policy-induced recession though it was not meant to be; the econocrats were aiming for a soft landing but it all went terribly wrong.
The double-digit interest rates that were intended to give us that transition went awry, with the economy sent crashing. ...
Keating masterminded the recovery using a modest Keynesian stimulus but he was never to really see a full recovery. Unemployment remained stubbornly high at one point hitting 11.25 per cent of the workforce; they called it "the jobless recovery". – Alex Millmow, "Twenty-five years on from the recession we had to have", The Sydney Morning Herald
For context, my parents bought their first house around this time, and they remembered interest rates were up around 17 percent, compared to around 2 percent at the time of writing. Anyone with serious debt was basically wiped out, a couple of my dad's friends losing their farms, and one of them losing a lot more than that. If interest rates hadn't been so high, he told me darkly, he never would've had to go driving trucks to make ends meet, and so wouldn't have had the truck accident that killed him.
In short, it was the worst banking downturn in a century, and for once the old maxim that motor racing is last into a recession and last out again didn't hold true. For those who held sponsorship contracts with the big banks – like Allan Moffat, who was in bed with ANZ – the pain filtered through almost immediately.
One of my disappointments was in 1990, when I still had ANZ sponsorship. The managing director, Will Bailey, called me into his office to tell me that the bank had suffered its first loss in history and he'd had to dismiss some 3,000 people. Well, of course, they couldn't maintain the race team.
He told me the cars were mine and all the bills would be paid. Then he handed me an envelope with a cheque in it and you how much it was for? How about $250,000? That truly was, aw shit, the nicest thing that ever happened to me. He told me it was a donation to help me get my next sponsor.
From that day onward I spent most Christmas Day celebrations with Will Bailey and his wife. – Allan Moffat, AMC #79
So Gibson Motorsport had the misfortune to be launching the most expensive touring car Australia had ever seen, in the midst of Australia's worst recession from 1929 to 2020.
When people realised the GT-R was going to be the gun car, they knocked on our door and wanted to run GT-Rs – until we told them the budget. Two things killed that [customer cars] – one was the budget required and the second was that they would have to deal through Fred, because NISMO didn't want to deal with independent teams in Australia. They said they were happy to supply through Gibson Motorsport.
And motorsport being what it is, those people always believed they'd get second-rate service because Fred would be the works team and the rest would get hand-me-downs.
Fred was successful, of course, with the GIO car which ran under him, but the rest of the people – and I mean oil company sponsored teams – actually knocked on my door and asked us if they could be part of GT-R and ultimately they walked away from it because of the cost of doing it, even compared with the Sierra Cosworth RS500. – Paul Beranger, Auto Action #1787
So we would not see the ATCC become "Formula GT-R" like in Japan, where 18 NISMO-prepped Skylines duked it out for line honours at Fuji and Suzuka. Only one team in the country could afford that, and the only reason they could afford it was because, ironically, their corporate backers were deep in the red. The Button Car Plan was in full effect at this time but Nissan's cosy tie-up with Holden had meant for the last few years the most important car rolling down their Clayton production line was not the R31 Skyline, but the Pulsar hatchback, which was also being sold as the Holden Astra. When the shared engine contract was abruptly severed, Nissan had instead extended the hand of friendship to Broadmeadows, which resulted in the GQ Patrol becoming available as the Ford Maverick. But Ford's existing relationship with Mazda rather diluted their need for Nissan, and when Nissan presented a plan to build the next front-wheel drive Bluebird locally as both the Nissan Pintara and the Ford Corsair (replacing Ford's imported Telstar), Broadmeadows quietly brushed it off – the last thing they needed was another mid-size sedan creating volume issues for their Falcon. Nissan's days as an Australian manufacturer were rapidly spiralling to a close, so they had no choice but to promote like hell and hope for the best. The $1 million annual budget allocated to Gibson Motorsport was peanuts compared to what they stood to lose if they gave up that visibility.
Actual photo of Nissan Australia c.1991
Godzilla was finally ready to wade ashore and start its rampage, but it was hiding the fact that the company behind it was now sliding beneath the waves...
The VN Commodore was the car that brought Holden back from the brink. It returned Australia's Own to profitability after a decade of getting their head kicked in by their cross-town rivals at Ford. But it was also, in a roundabout way, the car that would bury them 30 years later.
To explain how such a thing happened means a deep dive not just into the car itself, but into the people who ended up driving it, and thus into the image the company backed itself into. An image that eventually leads back to the racetrack, especially the one on a smallish hill just south of a medium-sized city in regional NSW.
The Design: A Wide Brown Car For Me When the big new VN Commodore launched at Sanctuary Cove, Queensland, on 17 August 1988, it was the culmination of a decade of hard lessons for Holden. Ever since the Commodore had arrived way back in 1978, it had been suffering from a fundamental flaw: it was too damn small. Designed as an Opel Rekord for the medieval streets of West Germany, it just felt cramped to Australians accustomed to cars that could take three adults across the back seat.
That couldn't be corrected because, according to product planners working in the aftermath of the Oil Crisis, that was meant to be a feature and not a bug: small was supposed to mean fuel-efficient. Unfortunately, Holden had shot themselves in the foot by retaining the Red inline-six from the Kingswood, an engine beloved for its reliability and ease of maintenance, but one that was notoriously thirsty. At the time debuting both a new body and a new engine must have seemed a risk too far, but with 20/20 hindsight some boldness would've served Holden well: with a Red under the bonnet, the Commodore simply wasn't frugal enough to justify squeezing your family into its smaller cabin, especially when it wasn't as well-built as a similarly-sized Japanese car. The mistake was compounded by Ford, who'd deliberately reworked their own ageing straight-six with Alloy Heads to give it pretty much the same economy figures as the Commodore, allowing their salesman to argue that if it used no more fuel anyway, why not buy the more spacious car?
The loss of sales hit Holden hard, and the company spent the mid-1980s in a painful downsizing and restructuring period. Even worse, the nature of the Rekord platform itself completely precluded a commercial range – no ute to sell to farmers, no panel van to offer the tradies, no cab chassis to build into ambulances and mobile repair workshops. When the Acacia Ridge plant in Brisbane had closed and taken the WB with it, the entire commercials market had been abandoned to Ford, along with the prestige car niche once owned by the Holden Statesman. That hadn't been an easy decision to make, as Holden managing director Chuck Chapman had outlined at the launch of the VK in 1984:
At the same time we were going through the agonising process of rationalising our workforce, making hard decisions about future plant operations and trying to maintain sales in a declining market. I don't think too many people understand what a big company goes through at a time like this in an industry which must be exploring new and expensive frontiers of technology several years ahead while simultaneously undergoing the immediate trauma we faced.
So Holden's mission as they started shopping for a new model in the early 1980s was clear: they had to match the Falcon for internal space, they had to serve up a proper commercial range, and they had to return to the long-wheelbase prestige car market after several years away. Whichever model they chose, the development and "Australianisation" process would have to take place while the company was posting year-on-year losses and laying off workers by the thousands. And just to add some extra difficulty, they had to do it while offering up a whole new six-cylinder engine as well. No pressure.
The early days of the project saw Holden retreading the path that had led to the Commodore in the first place – they went to Opel in Germany. The Opel designers had been working on a replacement for the old Rekord called the Omega A, which had been designed with the typical early-1980s focus on aerodynamics. Flush-fitting side glass, a steeply-raked windscreen and low-profile headlights were very much in evidence, giving the car a drag coefficient of just 0.28 – necessary to improve fuel consumption and make the car stable on the high-speed autobahns of West Germany. It was the most aerodynamic sedan in the world at the time, but try as he might, Chapman could not prevail upon his Opel colleagues to widen the floorplan so they could share. In October 1982, the Germans told Holden that any further increase in width would have too severe an impact on their precious aerodynamics.
This was a bad sign, because about this time Holden planning director Ray Grigg outlined four possible programmes for the second-gen Commodore. The most expensive option would be to stretch the existing V-car floorplan and clad it in parts taken from the Omega: this would create an enormous amount of work and incur steep development costs, but was the most strategic option as it would set Holden up for the following decade. By contrast, the cheapest options were simply to facelift the VL again (as the VM), or just to adopt the Omega as it was... so of course these were the approaches favoured by the higher-ups. Fearing GM fatuity was about to sink Holden forever, the planning department's Roger Gibbs conspired with other design staff to convince Chapman the Omega as it was just wouldn't work. A mock-up that mimicked the proposed interior dimensions failed to move him, as he simply countered, "This is static; you'd get a different impression of size if you were moving." So, pulling out the final stops, they bought a secondhand XE Falcon and performed a quick cut-and-shut to reproduce the interior size they wanted, then took Chapman and a couple of other intransigents for a thorough backseat road-test. Just for good measure, they also brought along a standard Falcon and the much skinnier VK Commodore for comparison. That did the trick: although it would mean begging Detroit for a bail-out – money by no means guaranteed given the losses of the last decade – Chapman agreed to take their proposal for a wide-body Commodore to his bosses at GM.
On 23 January 1985, Chapman and Grigg gave a 15-minute blitz presentation to GM brass at the Warren Tech Centre in Detroit. The Americans were disquieted: a nine-figure sum for a project they were sure they'd got right this time was a big ask. But on this occasion GM came to the rescue, granting $200 million for the new-generation Commodore, $50 million of which would have to go towards the needed increase in width. The rest would be spent upgrading Elizabeth with two fully automatic transfer presses and new tooling, as well as adopting Toyota-style Kanban or "just in time" parts supply protocols. Producing full VNs at both Elizabeth and Dandenong would have added $200 to the asking price of each vehicle, so Elizabeth was chosen to shoulder the burden alone. On 3 December 1986, Chapman reported to the Australian media: "The money from General Motors has released us from a burden of debt we could never have earned our way out of."
Therefore, the VN ended up based on the same V-car platform as the outgoing VL: Phil Zmood and his design team took the blueprints and basically did a reverse Mad fold-in, stitching an extra 72mm of width into the body of the car. The axles and other bits and bobs were then stretched to suit, the greater under-bonnet area at last allowing Holden to bring the air conditioning up to an Australian level.
To go easy on GM's bail-out money they looked to Opel's work where possible, starting with that lovely flush glasshouse. The Omega also provided a fine template for the rear quarters, especially that higher aero-styled body line that allowed for a bigger boot, while the Senator B (the long-wheelbase version of the Omega) donated its doors and roof panels. The wider radiator grille was entirely Holden's work, however, necessary not only to replace the Omega's iffy face and plug the gap at the front, but to hide the cost-cutting going on under the skin: the extra millimetres added to the body did not translate to the suspension, which carried over the VL's MacPherson struts at the front (although the more direct front anti-roll bar mounts were a major advance), and the same old Rekord semi-trailing arms with a Salisbury live axle at the rear. There just wasn't enough cash to widen all these gubbins to match, so the front end basically had to be transferred directly across, leaving the car with a "knock-kneed" appearance, especially on the basic 14-inch wheels. Zmood's solution was to ditch the traditional integrated wheel arch flares, leaving the car to sit comfortably over the VL's narrower front track, yet blend subtly outwards to meet the wider rear track. Some carefully chosen steering lock in the promotional photos took care of the rest.
But more size was only part of the solution: Holden also needed to lift their game as far as build quality went. It seems unbelievable now, when the VN is renowned for being a crude beast, but at the time it really was a step forward: the VN was a quantum leap in assembly accuracy and finer tolerances, courtesy of new centralised assembly practices at Elizabeth. An ongoing confab between the design and development teams and those who actually built them on the line helped ensure the new methods became habit, and given the VN's flush aero bodywork, it hadn't come a moment too soon.
The interior too ended up being entirely local, featuring a one-piece dash fascia with wide centre console and binnacle-style controls. For many years Holden's dashboards, gauges, heater units and other controls had been installed by patient and flexible workers but, inspired by Opel, Holden had switched over to a new modular method of assembly: the firewall, dash steering column, pedals, fuse box and wiring harness were pre-assembled off-line before being dropped into the car through the front windscreen and glued into place. Opel door trims were rejected as too expensive, so instead the VN got Holden's first moulded door trims after decades of Masonite boards. Holden also held firm on their preferred rack-and-pinion steering rather than following Opel in returning to recirculating-ball, a decision made easier when very good racks were being made just up the road in Albury-Wodonga.
The Buick 3800 V6 The powerplant chosen for this new-generation Commodore was to prove as big, uncouth and effective as the car itself. Initially the plan was to carry on with the Powertech 6Ei Nissan RB30E, the beautifully smooth and refined inline-six that had powered the VL. Nissan Australia had been keen to build an enlarged 3.3-litre version of this engine locally rather than carry on importing, as its cost was heading northwards of 40 percent of the value of each car sold under Keating's "banana republic" dollar.
The problem was, Nissan would need a long-term commitment from Holden to go ahead with that plan, and Holden had concerns over whether the engine could be stretched beyond 3.3 litres to meet future needs. They were also worried about the long-term prospects of Nissan's bread-and-butter Skyline after Mitsubishi's wide-body Magna exposed its biggest shortfall. The final nail in the coffin came from the marketing department, who thought a big new Commodore would need a big new donk to match. With Ford busy expanding their 3.2-litre six to a 3.9, they really didn't want to leave their buyers with a shortage of cubes that would have to be defended in pub arguments. Looking to the future, a 3.3 just wouldn't cut it.
Several other ideas were tossed about: dusting off the old Red engine and giving it overhead cams and a crossflow head; slicing two cylinders off the faithful old Holden V8 to make a V6 (four running prototypes were built before this idea was canned); welding a couple of extra pots onto the four-cylinder Family II engine from the Astra; or even – yes, really – buying new overhead-cam sixes from Ford, an idea that was shot down not because it was morally repugnant to put Ford hardware under the bonnet of a Holden, but because that hardware proved too tall to fit under said bonnet!
With time ticking away and no serious alternatives locked in by mid-1986, Chuck Chapman and Don Wylie, director of engineering and design, flew to Detroit to check on the progress of the 3.8-litre V6 being developed by sister brand Buick. This engine had started life in 1961 as the "Aluminum Fireball" V8, which Buick had discarded by 1963 because the American customer just didn't give it the maintenance it needed (especially regarding the expensive coolant not generally available Stateside). Since a steel block was good enough for 'Murkans, Buick had happily sold the rights to Rover instead, where it would become a legend in cars like the Rover SD1 and most Land Rovers up to 2003. Interest in the U.S. was only revived by the 1973 Oil Crisis, as the Americans belatedly realised they needed to get this fuel consumption thing under control. And this, in a roundabout way, led to the 300ci member of this family of V8s undergoing surgery to remove the last two cylinders, emerging as a 3,791cc, 90-degree V6 instead.
With unleaded petrol adopted early in the U.S., GM put the V6 through a major redesign ready for a 1988 relaunch. Among the updates were a a 23 percent reduction in reciprocating mass, a longer cylinder block that placed the connecting rods in the centreline of the bores and pistons, and a Mitsubishi-type balance shaft for smoother running. It was certainly not technically innovative, particularly with its pushrod-actuated valves, but it was endowed with the latest in electronic gadgetry such as GM's multipoint EFI and three coil packs for ignition.
Chapman and Wylie came away impressed with this engine's newfound refinement, approving it for the upcoming VN at once. Dandenong began retooling to produce this engine in numbers, although initially it would have to be imported, with local content due to tick upwards with each new update. With the Nissan engine now set to be axed, the 4-speed Jatco automatic gearbox that backed it was set to disappear as well, so Chapman made sure to arrange a supply of GM's Turbo-Hydramatic 700 to replace it. Even so, knowing the new Commodore was only two years away, Holden hedged their bets by not cancelling the RB30E contract until mid-1987, when they could be sure the V6 was on track for its 1988 release.
Despite the press blurbs insisting this was a long-planned strategic move, Holden barely had time to cobble up a set of exhaust headers, sump, oil filter adaptor, throttle body and a suitable cross-member with hydraulic mounts before the car's August 1988 launch. The long tortuous routes of the radiator hoses and the lousy positioning of the thermostat in the earliest cars highlighted how little time Holden had to adapt the V6 for its home in the Commodore.
The engine, when it arrived, was both a revelation and a disappointment. For an oldschool iron-block pushrod engine, it was surprisingly torquey and economical, with a claimed 8 litres per 100km in the city and 12.5 on the highway. But it was the power that really blew minds. Officially, it delivered 125 kW at 4,800rpm, and 292 Nm of torque at 3,600rpm, though most of it was available just above idle. For context, that wasn't just more power than Ford's Multipoint 3.9, that was more than the carburettored V8 in the VL Commodore! For the first time since the introduction of ULP, an Australian car felt as gutsy as it looked, and with kerb weights starting at just 1,290kg, it was enough to throw the basic VNs around like a ragdoll.
Chapman and his people seem to've missed a trick, however. The V6 had been developed with an automatic gearbox in mind, and only for use in front-wheel drive cars, where the engine could be mounted transversally to hide its inherent roughness. In the Commodore, where it would have to be mounted longitudinally to meet the long driveshaft of a rear-wheel drive car, it would also have to be mated to a pair of gearboxes it had never been intended for – the aforementioned TH700, and the Borg Warner T5 manual. All this, combined with the fact the engineering department had spent all their time just getting the damn thing running, worked to expose what Buick had done so well to hide. Despite the new balance shaft and hydraulic engine mounts, the V6 was actually as rough as guts and had the engine note of a leaf-blower, resulting in NVH readings that had to be seen to be disbelieved. It was something that couldn't really be ironed out as, due to its conception as a V8, it had the wrong V-angle for a V6, 90 degrees rather than the 60 that is optimum for engine balance and evenly-spaced firing pulses. Despite that, the engine and indeed the whole car would prove to be very durable: owners found the drivetrain would shake and vibrate early on until they loosened up, and then last forever without any further deterioration. Crude it might have been, but I bet a few Captiva owners today wish they could have it back.
Executive Privilege So the VN became the first Holden since 1948 to debut a new body and a new engine at the same time. And whereas Ford had offered their six-cylinder engine in a confusing array of 3.2s and 3.9s, with or without Multipoint injection, Holden made theirs available in a single spec – the highest – and then made it standard even on the entry-level Executive.
In 1988, a brand-new VN Executive would set you back $20,014 ($45,500 in 2019 dollars), although all you got for it was 14-inch steel wheels, the rather clunky T5 manual and no air conditioning. The 4-speed auto was optional, but in truth you were better off with the clunky manual, as the auto was rather lazy and tended to vibrate at normal road speeds, especially in fourth (although Ford's auto at this point was an even worse 3-speeder, and many owners found the solution was to drive it manually and never do normal road speeds!). A limited-slip diff was an extra $350, while that highly necessary A/C would set you back a whopping $1,478. You could also have 15-inch alloys and Holden's famous FE2 police suspension pack, which in stiffening everything up actually made the car more comfortable rather than less the car became less wallow-y. Cruise control was added in 1989 for an extra $315, a big help on the 13-hour road trip from Sydney to Melbourne.
Above the Executive was the Berlina, which was decked out as the "budget-luxury" version. For $24,781 ($56,300 in 2019) the air con and 4-speed auto were now standard, with the cruise control, FE2 and alloys optional. This was also the first appearance of what Holden called the "Optional Power Pack", which for an extra $1,586 added electric windows, a retractable antenna and powered mirrors. A decent car for the suburban dad, especially when both the Berlina and the Executive could also be had as wagons, which no amount of shopping bags or school projects would faze.
A curious thing happened when you got to Calais level, however. Ever since the axing of the Statesman, the Calais had become Holden's flagship model, priced a couple of grand above Ford's Fairmont Ghia because it was also supposed to be competing with the Fairlane as well. With the Statesman due to make a comeback, however, the Calais lost its place at the head of the table. Consequently, its price was given a haircut to move it into direct competition with the Ghia, and that meant some of the appointments it had enjoyed as a VL had to be scrapped. The standard velour interior still counted as plastic door trim to this kind of buyer, and it didn't even get a variable intermittent wiper setting. But there was still plenty there – computer-assisted trip meter, climate control, remote central locking, a built-in car alarm and an upmarket AM/FM cassette stereo system with four speakers all came standard. It also scored a better set of gauges to replace the rather garish units on the repmobiles. For a price you could also add the Country Pack suspension (a higher ride height for rough roads), leather upholstery and even Sports Suspension (don't laugh, a firmer ride made the car more comfortable, remember).
Cosmetically, the Calais differentiated itself from lesser Commodores with a different grille, some badges, two-tone paint and special alloy wheels fitted with 205/65/HR15 tyres. It was the tyres that made the biggest difference to the driver, as the wider footprint made the Calais hang on harder and turn in more sharply, without compromising the ride quality. The basic VN maladies of floaty suspension and vague steering remained, but at normal road speeds most drivers would never really notice.
At $31,265 ($71,000), the Calais wasn't cheap, and compared to a Fairmont Ghia the cabin was a tad Spartan, which hurt it in the sales race. But if a BMW or Mercedes was what you were hankering after, you'd have to pay the Federal Government's punitive 58.5 percent import tariff, and that was going to hurt. At least the build quality issues that plagued this generation of Australian car seemed to apply least to the Calais, as if the robots at Elizabeth actually took their time on these things in the knowledge they were destined for actual people rather than faceless companies. Even at this level, however, the V6 was standard, and although the Calais' extra sound-deadening did its best to damp down its noise and vibration, it was fighting a doomed rearguard action. Fortunately, there was also...
The 5000i V8 The VN won Wheels magazine's coveted Car Of The Year award for 1988, but there was an asterisk over it – everyone knew the award had been won on the strength of the V8 models, which didn't come along until March 1989. Go figure.
Like the V6, the long-serving 5.0-litre Holden V8 had been sent to finishing school ahead of its VN re-launch. Usually the first thing a new owner would do was lift the bonnet to show off to their mates, and this was particularly rewarding with a VN, as the crude airbox on top of the Walky had been swapped for the shiny new "bunch of bananas" inlet manifold. A thing of beauty, it really did set the tone for what lay beneath: Holden had used the opportunity to rid the V8 of issues that had been there since the beginning.
Updates included a reinforced block with extra ribbing below the head bolts, revised cooling passages and injector mounting bosses from the Walky, a proper multi-point fuel injection system with twin plenum chambers, better-breathing symmetrical-port heads, a Delco management system, beefier A9L conrods, and heavy-duty Tri-metal F770 main bearings (although the basic roadgoing version only got two-bolt units unlike the four of the homologation specials).
The result was a stonking 165 kW at 4,400rpm and 385 Nm at 3,600rpm, a completely different world to the 122 kW and 323 Nm of the VL. Turn the key in the morning and it would start first time every time, and thanks to its new injectors, settle into a nice, even idle around 600rpm. Without the induction noise of carburettors some of the V8's brassy trumpeting was gone, but underneath it retained the familiar pig-iron gurgle of a true muscle car. Slide it into first (or even D for dattaway...) and you'd find the expected huge reserves of torque, except they came at you with a fluid-like smoothness, virtually from idle. Owners discovered it would pull evenly from 30 km/h to 220km/h without a single gear change. Wheeling through the traffic was no problem at all, as all it took was the barest prod of the big toe to maintain your place in the line. Break out the heavy foot, however, and you'd soon find the V8 was ready to light up the rears in any gear, at almost any speed, even if it was an auto. It made the VN, according to the April 1989 edition of Wheels, "the fastest family car in the world".
Obviously the V8 was heavier than the V6, so Holden had to cough up some new suspension rates to keep the nose off the ground. The outcome of that little project was that there ended up being four distinct suspension tunes – normal, FE2, V8 normal and V8 FE2 – with not a few arguing the ultra-stiff V8 FE2 was the best for any VN Commodore, regardless of the engine. All VNs came with four wheel disc brakes, but sensibly V8 models got better ones to cope with the extra performance and momentum. They also got the same HR-rated tyres and 15-inch rims as the Calais. If you had a phobia of clutch pedals, then the same automatic as the V6 was fitted as it was considered strong enough to contain the extra torque – the engineering department simply recalibrated the shift points and called it a day.
Surprisingly though, even as an auto the V8 wouldn't necessarily empty the 84-litre fuel tank like a bathtub drain. Highway cruising would return maximum figures of around 11 litres per 100km, while the suburban grind of roundabouts and traffic lights would see that rise to 14.5 or so. Put your foot down and that would disappear in a hurry, of course, but it was impressive that for once the V8 could be driven frugally.
The V8 was optional across the range, but its true home was in the muscular Commodore SS. Released in March 1989, for the first time the SS was to be an ongoing rather than limited-edition model. Released in either Phoenix Red or Atlas Grey (with the very contemporary Alpine White added later on), in execution it was basically an Executive with a mandatory V8 and some exterior garnish – SS decals, striping, a modest bodykit and a unique set of 15-inch alloys. Because the flyweight VN was barely any heavier than the VL, the 1,360kg SS served up remarkable performance for the era, charging from 0-100 in 7.3 seconds on the way to a top speed of 228km/h. As long as you had the manual, the drag strip could be dealt with in as little as 15.2 seconds. At just $25,375 ($53,600), the SS became Holden's working-class hero – as long as you didn't mind the inherent Holden-ness of the thing.
At the press launch, I remember thinking what a curious mixture this new SS was. On the one hand, it was almost embarrassingly cheap-feeling with a mediocre finish, oversized kiddy-car gauges and those red stripes, which were still de rigeur on local sports sedans at the time. But, on the other hand, it was a remarkably effective performance sedan with a fuel-injected V8 running through a 5-speed manual transmission or the 4-speed slushbox...
It was also smooth and mechanically refined in a manner that served to accentuate the crudity of its shortcomings. There were triumphs of engineering beneath the mostly tasteless trimmings – if you like, the VN SS was a BMW trying to fight its way out of all that Holden kitsch. – Jarrod Witcombe, Unique Cars Is. 358
Not every SS was for civilian use, either. As Ford boasted about building Australia's unbreakable taxi fleet, Holden decided their brand was better known as the maker of the nation's police cruisers instead. With the BT1 Police Pack on the options list, the VN soon owned the state police fleets once monopolised by Ford, taking over just as the last of Ford's XE V8 police cars were taken out of service. Pent-up demand for a V8 sedan with enough rear seat width for a burly officer to sit either side of a suspect caused VN police car orders to soar.
Interestingly, it turns out there was also a model aimed at the boy-racers called the Commodore S. Think of it as half an SS and you've got the idea: at $21,665 ($49,200), it was positioned as the budget sports model and was basically an SS minus the V8 (or if you're less generous, an Executive with a bodykit). Since I'd never even heard of it until starting research for this blog, I can't imagine it was an overwhelming success. Anyone out there know how many they sold? Hell, anyone out there actually have one? The comment box is below.
The Group A So if the SS was good, the SS Group A had to be better, right? Not exactly...
Between them, the various V8-optioned VNs (plus all the highway patrol cars) gave Holden the 5,000 they needed to qualify the car for Group A racing. The next stage was the "sporting evolution" you needed if you actually wanted to win, and it was here that things got a bit wobbly.
The VN Commodore SS Group A SV was the end of an era, not just the last genuine homologation special Holden would ever build, but the last one Australia would ever see as well. It was built to meet three key demands from the race teams. They wanted the fuel-injected, pushrod-actuated engine that was safe to 8,000rpm, to give them enough power to compete with the computerised, turbocharged powerplants coming from Ford and Nissan. They also wanted a 6-speed gearbox and a body that provided enough clearance to fit 12-inch wheels. With the VN, Holden ticked every single box.
Built at Elizabeth but extensively modified at the Holden Special Vehicles facility in Clayton, Victoria, the Group A's beating heart was a stronger version of the 5000i V8. Developed with feedback from the Holden Racing Team, the block was strengthened with thicker castings in known trouble spots, it was given four-bolt mains and roller rockers, and since it needed the twin throttle body of the Walky, it was marked out by the incongruously primitive-looking boxy inlet manifold. Holden also beefed up the crankshaft and conrods, but HRT engine man Rob Benson would soon find they'd actually overdone it, as the excess reciprocating mass made the engine a tad sluggish up through the revs. On the road it developed 215 kW at 5,200rpm and 411 Nm at a relatively high 4,000rpm, but in race tune of course you'd start with 380 kW and negotiate from there. The 0-100 time was 6.5 seconds, the quarter mile time was 14.5, and the top speed a deeply impressive 253km/h. Not exactly supercar numbers, even at the time, but probably faster than what you drive today.
To harness the extra engine, the Group A was fitted with a heavy-duty AP Racing clutch mated to a special ZF S6-40 6-speed manual gearbox (taken straight from the ZR-1 Corvette). Stopping was achieved via a set of ventilated discs on all four wheels, using special twin-piston callipers designed for the HSV tuned version. Room for these was made by upsized 17x8 alloy wheels shod with Goodyear Eagles, and they were kept on the deck thanks to stiffer springs and the now-familiar Bilstein gas shocks.
On the outside, the Group A came with a much less confronting bodykit than the Walky. This time Phil Zmood had been sent over to liaise with the Tom Walkinshaw Racing people, rather than trusting the job to TWR's own consultant Peter Stevens (who'd done work with Lotus and McLaren). Developed once again at the MIRA windtunnel in Warwickshire, this time the fibreglass could be kept to a minimum, as the car had been designed to be aerodynamic in the first place. A new moulding for the front bumper (with an extra piece to blank off the standard car's slatted radiator grille), a subtly-sculpted "ducktail" rear spoiler, a slight bonnet bulge and a set of side skirts (with cut-outs for a racing exhaust) were all that was required. It all resulted in a drag co-efficient of less than 0.30, making the VN the slipperiest Commodore yet.
On paper it was all pretty tasty, but in the grand tradition of the XU-1 Toranas and the Phase II Falcons, these upgrades did not make the Group A any better as a road car. Upon the car's launch in June 1990, the assembled journos were taken for rides at Lang Lang by Allan Grice, who drove it at about eight-tenths and generally impressed; Phil Anders recalled that he was taken enough that he nearly bought one straight after. But once he drove it for himself, he was glad he hadn't.
The AP clutch was ridiculously heavy, making town driving a chore. The toughening-up left the engine feeling like a truck. The bigger wheels, low-profile tyres and stiff suspension were too much for the mattress-like VN platform, making the ride unbearable (compounded by possibly the least comfortable seats ever fitted to an Australian car). The steering was so nervous it was impossible to place the car on a winding road with any accuracy. Its grip in the wet or on rippled surfaces was tenuous at best and dependent on fresh rubber.
But the worst thing by a country mile was the Corvette gearbox, which was obstructive and stiff and featured a set of ratios that didn't seem to've been changed on the boat ride across the Pacific – it was essentially a wide-ratio 4-speed, with two uselessly tall gears on top. Highway cruising at 100km/h in fourth felt fine, but change to fifth and the engine struggled as the revs dropped below the torque band. Sixth was completely out of the question. Coupled with the constant flexing of the chassis itself, and the Group A constantly generated the impression there was a massive powertrain ready to break loose from its moorings at any time.
Even as a posemobile it was limited, as although the bodykit looked great and just begged for an aggressive shade to set it off – the Tooheys giveaway cars in black were a symphony of evil – the colour chosen was Durif Red, a dull maroon that managed to make this racecar with a number plate into a wallflower. But what really brought these shortcomings to a head was the price. The Group A retailed for a staggering $59,850, or more than $114,000 in 2019 money – too much for a sports car that was actually pretty rubbish at being a sports car, let alone in a recession, and far, far too much for anything with a Holden badge. If you absolutely had to turn your daily commute into an homage to Brock or Perkins, you bought the normal SS and used the change to buy one-third of a house in Sydney.
The Hoon Factor So overall, the VN was the final proof that size did matter. Comparing it to the rival EA Falcon is kind of pointless, a bit like comparing the M3 "Grease Gun" to the British Sten – both were cheap, mass-produced pieces of crap that did the job, and the Holden won just by taking away the Falcon's ability to use size as a sweetener. So despite being a worse car than its predecessor in almost every way, the VN returned Holden an operating profit of $157.3 million in 1989 alone, and would ultimately sell to the tune of 215,180 across all models, compared to fewer than 152,000 for the VL. The lesson sank in, and Australian cars would get bigger with every generation from now on. Having walked the company through its darkest days, Chuck Chapman signed off and slipped into a very deserved retirement on 31 December, 1987: he got Holden back on top with the VN, then dropped the mike.
But there was a darker side to this sales renaissance. In 2010, after a promising free practice for the Australian Grand Prix, a 25-year-old Lewis Hamilton did his part for world linguistics by bringing "hoon" to the rest of the English-speaking world. After spending the evening going through data in the McLaren F1 team's garage, Hamilton needed to unwind and, unfortunately, chose to do it on public roads in his Mercedes C63 AMG. Lewis accelerated around some cars waiting to leave Albert Park ahead of him, kicking out the rear of the car and screeching his tyres – right in front of a police divisional van, who pulled him over and charged him – the 2008 World Champion – with "improper use of a motor vehicle". Lewis, who was described as "extremely cooperative" and "fairly disappointed" with the incident, had discovered Victoria's anti-hoon laws the hard way.
Those laws largely existed because of VN drivers.
As well as debuting a new body and a new engine, the VN also marked the start of a new sales strategy for Holden. Again, up to 90 percent of Australian cars in this era were sold not to private buyers, but to fleets, and that fleet focus permeated everything Ford and Holden did. Ford had got ahead for the 1980s by tailoring their vehicles specifically to the fleet buyers, risking a wide-body XD even after the Oil Crisis because the taxi companies needed it, and building wagons that matched what Telecom had asked for pretty much to the millimetre. That these vehicles ended up in every suburban driveway as secondhand buys was mostly a useful by-product, as thousands of company cars finished their year on the job and were sold off cheap.
In this environment, Holden's attempt to sell the Commodore as a refined, fuel-efficient Euro-box had fallen short, so now they had a new strategy. Where Ford had landed huge fleet sales by building cars especially for the fleets, Holden would wrongfoot them by building the best second-hand car, ensuring good resale value by guaranteeing every ex-government and company car would have a private buyer waiting for it at the end of its life.
This was the true purpose of the racing programme: to make the Commodore a rite of passage for the thrusting young men of Generation X who'd just shed their L plates and were now nursing Peter Brock fantasies. Viewed dispassionately, a full-size family car was the last thing a teenage driver needed, but the glamour of "BROCKYYYY WOO!" and some ever-more-aggressive offerings from HSV meant by the dawn of the 90's, a Commodore was every teenager's dream first car. It was less, "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday" than "Win on Sunday, better resale on Monday", and it caught the whole industry napping.
The problem was, the VN was in no way a suitable car for such drivers. It wasn't just that we had a car with more power than the old V8 models, which came on like a light switch; it was also that the flyweight construction of the body, which was meant to boost fuel economy, offered absolutely no protection in the event of a crash. In a time before ANCAP safety ratings, the only way to find out the survivability of a car was to look up hospital admissions, and for VN drivers that made for grim reading. "Safety" was about to become the big theme of the 90's, and the unsuitability of the VN platform on this front was about to force Holden into another desperate rearguard action.
A common incident in Dubbo and oh Jesus I live here now (source)
But the final nail in the coffin (often literally) was that Holden had plonked a big new body with a powerful new engine onto rear suspension only ever intended for a four-cylinder Opel. When Holden had adopted the Rekord E as the basis for the original Commodore, the suspension had come as part of the package, and that suspension concealed a fatal flaw. Under hard braking or cornering, or even a severe change in road camber, it was easy to apply too much sideways force to either rear wheel, distorting the mounting bushes and allowing the wheel to steer of its own accord. The usual way of controlling a car stepping out at the back wouldn't always work, because the car wasn't sliding, but steering itself sideways. Driven sensibly, such a car wasn't all that dangerous; driven by a young man with a heavy foot and a full load of passengers on a late-night Maccas run (or perhaps a servo run – I don't think there were many 24-hour McDonalds around in those days), a sudden camber change was enough to deflect the suspension and steer the car into a sideways shunt or a series of barrel rolls. The danger only went up if the young man added fatter rear tyres and correspondingly increased the grip and forces involved.
To deal with this, Opel had cooked up some new toe control links and made them mandatory on any car with a six-cylinder or bigger, debuting them on the Omega in 1987. Holden, in their great wisdom, disregarded this entirely in order to keep the bean-counters happy. So the VN, which had a lot more power than any Opel, piss-poor throttle linkage geometry, instant torque, a light tail and poor rear grip, was leaving the factory without the needed toe control links, and then being deliberately marketed at testosterone-poisoned younger men: if you were the parent of a P-plater in the early 90's, the VN was a veritable nightmare. Wrote Joe Kenwright in his Shannons Club article, Holden Milestone or Unguided Missile?:
There was another wildcard. During this period, this writer once interviewed dealers on a weekly basis for a series of national used car columns. One dealer in particular based his entire business on turning over near new fleet Falcons and Commodores as they hit 30-40,000km in their first year. He was therefore one of the first to stock a used VN. A tough operator, you could imagine him selling a Lightburn Zeta as a family wagon for a family of five but the arrival of his first used VN exposed a different side.
After hauling me into his office with some ceremony away from his staff, he suggested quite forcefully: "Youse blokes must be on drugs raving about the VN and giving it the Car of the Year." I took a deep breath and had a fair idea of what was coming. I had driven an early VN Executive V6 or two. They all left me at odds with my colleagues as they struck me as lethal in the wrong hands.
He continued: "I wouldn't let my wife drive that (pointing to the shiny metallic blue VN on the lot), let alone my teenage kids. There is no progression in that accelerator pedal. You just touch it and all hell breaks loose without warning. It's as rough as guts."
"And I now have to sell them to all these hyped-up young blokes that come in here desperate for one."
And that's without even mentioning the substandard thief-proofing that made the VN the chariot of joyriders and ram-raiders, reaching epidemic levels in Western Australia especially... it just went on and on. All this, combined with the rough finish that meant buying one meant trading quality for #AussiePride, meant within a few years VN owners were of... a certain type. How can it be put with delicacy and tact? Perhaps, that they were the sorts of people who'd wear stubbies and double-pluggers to court? Yes, that about sums it up. The archetypal VN driver was someone with a beautifully-cultivated mullet and a flanno, biting his bottom lip as he single-pegged it out of the roundabout in front of you, or perhaps a single mum with a station wagon full of kids and a pack of Winnie Blues tucked into her bra. The VN confirmed Holden as the brand of choice for knuckle-draggers, and genuine Commodore enthusiasts were tainted by association. This had been an element of Holden's image all along, and they'd worked hard to scotch it with the European-ness of the earlier Commodores, but the VN undid it all in a heartbeat. Until the very end, when the VF was objectively a pretty good car, you couldn't buy one because it was just a bit... well, bogan. What would the neighbours think?
That's why I say the VN is the car that killed Holden, even as it revived them. It wasn't mere cultural cringe that killed the Australian car, it was the statement that buying one made, that you were happy to be associated with all of the above. It was an association that would only get stronger as we headed into the V8 Supercar era, which would grow fat pandering to this same reservoir of Akka-Dakka, Barnesy and Chisel fans. To have lost Holden is a crying shame, but one of the reasons Australia stopped buying Holdens is, thank god, this country has moved on.
