JHP is less than 10 minutes from where I live in the next suburb over.
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HSV's swansong MY17 Commodore-based range to be topped by revised GTS, new GTS-R and ballistic limited-edition 476kW LS9 V8-powered GTS-R W1 flagship
The last and perhaps greatest HSV of them all will be named GTS-R W1.
That’s the word from motoring.com.au sources as the hot Holden tuner works towards a second-quarter 2017 launch for the W1, which will be powered by the awesome LS9 supercharged 6.2-litre V8 from the previous generation Corvette ZR1 supercar.
But that’s not all, as HSV is understood to have signed off a double-barrelled naming and model strategy with an LSA-engined GTS-R to join HSV’s final homegrown Commodore-based MY17 range at the same time as the W1, by the middle of next year.
As well, technical development will spread beyond the engine bay with motoring.com.au learning that Aussie Supashock dampers will replace Magnetic Ride Control in the W1.
While W1 production will be limited to around 250 examples, the standard GTS-R will be generally available – at least while the Elizabeth plant keeps running – and will sit above the existing $95,990 430kW/730Nm GTS (pictured) in terms of both price and outputs from its 6.2-litre supercharged V8.
The flagship farewell model picks up the W1 designation because the LS9 engine will be installed at the Walkinshaw-owned company’s Clayton facility rather than Holden’s Elizabeth plant, as is the case with LSA and – soon to be discontinued – LS3 models.
It’s a similar naming convention to the limited-edition W427 of 2008, which was powered by a 7.0-litre (427 cubic-inch) LS7 V8 also installed at Clayton.
It appears certain that the W1 will be the most expensive HSV ever, with pricing at or north of $170,000, usurping the $150,000 ask for the W427.
And it will also be the most powerful HSV ever, with power and torque figures very close to the 476kW/820Nm outputs of the Corvette.
It could be lower or, mind-bogglingly, it could be higher depending on where local noise and emissions homologation work ends up.
Whatever those outputs, they should deliver a 0-100km/h sprint time of four seconds or less, and 0-400m times close to 12.0 sec, making the W1 the fastest production car ever built in Australia.
To achieve it you’re going to have be adept with three pedals as the W1 will be Tremec TR-6060 six-speed manual only, although HSV is understood to have pushed a fair way down the path of automatic transmission development before raising the white flag for cost and durability reasons.
Excitingly, HSV’s W1 development work is understood to have spread far beyond the driveline.
Motoring.com.au has learned HSV has ditched the MRC magnetorheological dampers for the GTS-R W1, instead opting to go with the Australian-developed Supashock damper.
Designed and manufactured in Adelaide, Supashock and its owner Oscar Fiorinotto has forged a relationship with HSV via its sister organisation, the Holden Racing Team, which uses them in its Commodore VF Supercars.
Fiorinotto is understood to be developing a new-specification billet damper specifically for the W1, featuring advanced damper technology.
This is the second Aussie performance project Fiorinotto has been associated with in recent times, as he is also supplying dampers to the new Tickford range of hot Fords being developed by Prodrive.
Only the W1 is expected to get the Supashock dampers, which will be adaptive but — unlike the MRC suspension in the current GTS – non-adjustable.
However, both GTS-R models are in line to upgrade to an even more powerful AP braking specification than the current top-spec six-piston 390mm front disc combination offered by HSV. But don’t expect carbon-ceramic stoppers.
Wheel size isn’t expected to climb from the top current HSVs’ staggered 20-inch set-up front and rear, nor will we see carbon wheels.
The GTS-R name was first used on a limited-edition model based on the VS Holden Commodore in 1996. Powered by a bored and stroked 230kW 5.7-litre version of the venerable Holden V8, it stood out with its bright yellow exterior paint and large rear wing with carbon-fibre inserts.
Whether the reborn GTS-R and W1 will follow this extravagant styling path is as yet unknown, although there is no doubt they will feature unique flourishes developed by HSV design chef Julian Quincy.
The process of building the W1 will be complex. Complete GTS models will be shipped from Elizabeth and then upgraded at Clayton with the LS9 engine and other unique items such as Supashock dampers.
The LSA engines will be sold off to recoup some of the cost, which is said to be substantial for the LS9 at around $30,000 per unit.
HOLDEN has taken its first tangible step on the road to the end of Australian car manufacturing, with the final Cruze rolling off the production line at its factory in Elizabeth, South Australia, this morning.
The demise of the lion-badged small sedan and hatchback marks not just the beginning of the end for all local Holden production – which will be completely shut down by the end of next year – but the end of small-car manufacturing in Australia.
The final Cruze came off the Elizabeth line at around 8:30am this morning, just as Ford was turning off the lights on its entire Australian manufacturing operations in Broadmeadows and Geelong.
An SRI Z-series hatchback was the variant at the back of the Cruze queue, which will be handed over to long-time Holden charity partner The Leukaemia Foundation this afternoon along with the final sedan.
The donated vehicles will be raffled to raise funds for patient transport services and accommodation, with the pair going up for grabs at the organisation’s ‘Light the Night’ event in Adelaide’s Victoria Square this evening.
GM Holden communications director Sean Poppitt told GoAuto that the mood at the Elizabeth factory had been surprisingly positive with about 100 workers assembling to bid farewell to the last Cruze.
“We had a really good send-off for it with a guard of honour and people were in a good mood,” he said.
“There is a lot of pride in the place. Tinged with sadness obviously, but overwhelmingly it was pride in having played a part in history. In a strange way it was quite a nice day.”
For the official end-of-the-line ceremony, Holden locked the media out with proceedings “totally kept in-house” as a mark of respect for the impacted employees.
Holden chose the end of Cruze production to coincide with the end of all local Ford production, and while Mr Poppitt acknowledged “there was an element of coincidence” in the decision, he said there were good reasons to align with Ford’s shutdown.
“The primary driver was trying to align supply chain in terms of the total industry,” he said. “From a supply chain point of view it makes a lot of sense to combine it into the same day.”
Holden chairman and managing director Mark Bernhard acknowledged the dedication of employees to designing, developing and producing the Cruze.
“Those who were involved in the Cruze project have a strong, and deserved, sense of pride at what was achieved in terms of project development, management, engineering, design and, of course, production,” he said.
Until the end of 2017, the South Australian facility will continue to produce the Commodore, but the company has not indicated if it will progressively switch off model derivatives such as the wagon and utility.
Production of the Australian-designed Cruze hatch started in February 2011 and was joined later the same year by the sedan. In total, 126,255 Cruzes rolled out of the factory, and if lined up nose-to-tail would apparently reach from Melbourne to Hobart.
Mr Bernhard used the milestone to reiterate its strategy to manage the transition from manufacturer to full-line importer.
“Holden’s business is changing and we are building a bright future, but it is equally important to recognise and honour our people and our heritage. We’re incredibly proud of our manufacturing history and our legacy,” he said.
“I want to thank every Holden employee, and all those people in the supply chain, for their personal contribution to our industry and our company.”
The company is offering its staff access to a range of support services at a “transition centre” set up at the Elizabeth site to help displaced employees find work after the plant turns out the lights next year.
Each employee is also offered up to $3000 worth of approved training as part of Holden’s $15 million contribution to the government growth fund.
With today’s Cruze shutdown, 270 employees will be out of a job, but Holden says this is a smaller figure than forecast thanks to ongoing demand for the Commodore, allowing more staff to be retained until 2017 when the entire production team will clock off for the last time.
Despite a slowdown in demand and corresponding shift in production, Holden executive manufacturing director Richard Phillips said the quality of Holden vehicles has never been as high.
“The passion and dedication of the manufacturing workforce means they continually raise their quality standards and they are determined that the last cars built at Elizabeth will be the best quality ever,” he said.
Beyond the end of local production, the lion badge will prevail in the form of ongoing design, engineering and development centres. The Port Melbourne studio is one of only two in the world capable of creating concepts from initial sketch to finished rolling model.
Zeta and Alpha were different platforms. Zeta was designed for and solely for the Commodore, and thus only for one main market. They modified it to use for the 2009 Camaro, but that's the only other car that used the platform. Beyond that, Commodore was only sold mainly in Australia and New Zealand. (Some were exported to America as Pontiacs and later Chevrolets in very limited numbers, some HSVs exported to the UK in very limited numbers, and some exported to the Middle East.)
Almost stopped reading here. No, it absolutely was not. Zeta was designed to replace pretty much everything bigger than the Malibu in GM's North American lineup. From the very beginning, even before GM committed to making it a global architecture, it was designed to be more adaptable to the US market than the Catera/GTO were.
I'm sure that's some consolation to Pontiac dealers when it sold about an 8th as much as the two cars in the model lineup it replaced.
Avoid double posting next time.
His tone comes off as 'how dare you try to come up with an idea of saving Australian manufacturing and economy?' I'll admit, I'm a bit defensive about my home country.
Designed for the Commodore, yes. Do you know of any car that released in 2006 that used the Zeta platform that wasn't a Commodore? Does not mean it could not be used for other markets. You cannot deny it was not primarily designed for the Australian market, seeing as how that's where it was primarily sold. And you cannot deny Australia was the main market for the Zeta platform.
So you just don't know what the words you said mean. Because, no, designing a car with the stated intent of selling it around the world in multiple configurations and replacing large swaths of cars in a worldwide corporate hierarchy does not mean that it was designed solely for the one that came out just because that was the only one which wasn't cancelled.
I can deny that, actually. I think I've posted quite a bit of compelling evidence that the Zeta platform spent at least half of its development period as a global car platform, to underpin a wide variety of car makes and models and segments instead of just spending a billion dollars and greatly expanding engineering expertise; only to sell a car in a collapsing market that sold worse than the model it replaced that dated to the early 1990s and then having to lay a ton of people off. I know it's hard to compete with such groundbreaking statements as "get your facts straight" as if GM just up and declared bankruptcy in 2008 out of the blue and everything was fantastic before then, but so far I think I'm managing.
Yeah, actually. This entire tangent came up because you objected to me comparing Alpha to Zeta, since clearly you were under the impression that it was only intended to be used as the Commodore until the Camaro went into production. So let's step beyond that argument for a second, and go back to the thing your rebuttal is supposed to defend:
The fact of the matter is that they did do this. You could buy a Commodore in the USA, in mainland Europe, in Great Britain, and China, and the Middle East, and in Australia. Even the G8 Ute, which would have flopped on the market anyway but we'll ignore that for a second, was cancelled after some of them had already made the trip over the ocean. You could do this because, even though at the last minute they cancelled almost all of the plans to produce them outside of Australia, the car was still designed to be sold everywhere. And there still wasn't any money in it, even after GM emerged from bankruptcy relatively unscathed, to justify doing anything but sourcing them from the same factories in Australia that needed help to keep the lights on anyway. They only imported the Commodore again in America if they could guarantee fat profit margins, hence the SS being loaded from the factory. In fact, the Zeta platform was already ahead of where the Alpha was at this point, since (once again) it was designed to be sold around the world and the Alpha wasn't.
Except the discussion is whether or not the Alpha is viable as a worldwide automotive platform.
In 2007, Pontiac sold ~15,000 of them.
That's fantastic to hear. So how many of the... let's see... 951 total sales between the entire Cadillac range and the Camaro that GM sold in Europe last year were RHD?
There's ten times that many people in the United States. It is by a humongous margin the biggest market for the kind of car you're talking about; likely moreso than any other market combined. No displacement tax. Lax fuel economy laws. Extremely cheap fuel. Cars designed for the market, like the Alpha models were, tend to reflect that. And all the time GM was dicking around with importing Australian cars, Chrysler was consistently selling nealy 200,000 of a very similar pair of vehicles every year. They still are selling about 150,000 of them every year.
It's irrelevant what you said, because they wouldn't build them anywhere but the factories they are built in now for the sales numbers that they would pull in. You think they would restart Australian production for a theoretical range of cars that there's no indication would sell any better than the ones they already can't sell enough of to keep selling? How many Opel or Vauxhall badged cars that cost mid-range 3 series money are they going to sell if they build them in Germany?
Maybe if you had actually poked one.
G8 was limited production so they only had so many they could sell, GTO was considered too bland-looking for such a storied nameplate. The Ameri-Monaro has gathered a rather large following since. There was talks the G8 would become full series production. Then the recession hit and nearly killed GM, and Pontiac was sacrificed at the altar to keep them from all dying.
It would've better been served as a Chevrolet. It would've sold well as a Pontiac G8 Ute. Would've sold 5x more as a Chevrolet El Camino.
Because the Chrysler twins had already been on the market for several years at that point and racked up a bunch of accolades. They had the aggressive looks, they had the pop culture appeal, and they had the fanbase already. The G8 was for the most part a somewhat better and faster car, and it cost less to boot; but there was also a lot of stuff (equipment and trim options) that allowed you to do up the Chrysler twins to people's tastes like those silly sticker packages and wheel options that the Charger was available with.
