Australian Muscle Car 2020-02

engineers had a close look at what Opel was
proposing with the new model Rekord they
quickly realised it wasn’t going to fit the bill, as
it were – the engine bay wasn’t long enough to
accommodate the Holden in-line six.
It was during this evaluation trip to Germany
that the Holden men learned of a second
Opel new model under development, the
Senator. The Senator was a bigger car with
a longer front section. It was large enough to
take the Holden six, and, if they ditched the
recirculating-ball steering system and fitted a
rack-and-pinion unit instead, there was enough
room for the Holden V8 (which is why the VB
Commodore was the fi rst full-sized Holden
model to feature rack-and-pinion steering).
So while Opel continued development on
its four-cylinder Rekord and larger, six-cylinder
Senator, Holden opted for a combination
of both models: a car based on the Rekord
chassis but with the larger Senator front end
grafted on.
In the end Opel opted to adopt Holden’s
‘hybrid’ design for its own Commodore model
replacement (Opel fi rst used the Commodore
name in 1967 for the premium version of the
Rekord) – which was ultimately why the new
Holden came to be known as Commodore.
Saving the best till last
In the last issue of last issue of AMC we
looked back on the development of the
VE/VF Commodore model. The VE was
released in 2006 but the development
programme began in 1999 – 20 years ago.
Holden might have come to be known
as ‘Australia’s Own’ (which was always
a spurious claim, given that it had been
wholly owned by General Motors since the
early 1930s – in reality ‘Australia’s Own’
was no more Australian than Ford Australia:
both were American-owned auto makers who designed and
made cars in Australia), but the fact is that the VE/VF series was
the only truly Australian-developed Commodore. All previous
Commodore models, starting with the VB in 1978, were either
adaptations of existing Opel designs or were jointly developed
by the various GM subsidiaries.
That’s not to denigrate Holden’s design and engineering
efforts and achievements over the years. But as the
Commodore nameplate is consigned to history, it is worth
reflecting that the final locally-made Commodore was not only
a truly Australian car, but it was the best of the breed. More
than that, it was, as the design team always strived to make it,
a world class car.
If we can metaphorically park the ZB for a moment, the
VFII was a fitting way for Commodore and for the local
industry to bow out. The last Australian Commodore was also
the best.
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