SHOPPING GUIDE

WHAT you have to remember here is that the first of these cars are now more than 15 years old. Even the youngest of them will have already blown out 10 candles, so you need to shop carefully.

On really early cars, you could get lumped with an LS1 that was built on a Monday morning. Some of these things rattled when cold, and quite a few of them liked oil like your mad uncle likes beer. To be fair, Holden fixed and replaced a lot of engines, so a real problem child should have been ironed out by now (check for an ‘X’ stamped into the engine number to show a ‘fixed’ engine). Generally speaking, the later the build date, the better. Piston slap? Yep, they all seem to do that, too, mainly first thing in the morning; it should go away by the first gear change.

Try to find where the car is parked overnight and check for oil spots. Some early LS1S had a batch of sump bolts with the magical ability to loosen themselves; other times it can be a rear main seal that’s at fault. The LS1 could also be hard on lifters, so a tickety-tick motor is probably up for a set of those. Chill, there are only 16 of them. Beyond that, the six-bolt mains (cross-bolted from the side) mean the LS will take an awful hammering (seen those limiter-bashing vids on the interweb?), and we’ve seen plenty with 300,000 and even 400,000km on board and still going strong. They love fuel around town, but driven sanely on the highway, you’ll get your average consumption comfortably into the eights.

Because the Monaro had a longer door than a Commodore, the door trims are a bit hand-made. In some cases, the covering on the capping of the door trim can peel or crack, and you can’t buy the trims new anymore. Some of the interior trim bits are Monaro-specific, too, and can be hard to locate now. The little catches that secure the lids on the centre-console storage cubbies tend to go west pretty young, but you can buy them on the web and they take about two minutes to replace.