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.
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| 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.
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