LOADED AND BURDENED

The Calais wagon is big, full of gear and will break your heart at trade-in time

As a rule, you should never feel sorry for any car companies doing it tough, because they certainly don’t take a benevolent attitude towards your welfare. No sireee they don’t. As a kid I grew up with Holden, so it is sad to see the car company that once stood high and mighty in Australia now on its knees. I won’t bore you with the sales numbers but they’re awful — and they keep getting worse.

So why should you consider a Calais V Tourer, the top spec Commodore wagon?

If you’re shopping mid-size or large wagons and SUVs, there are several good reasons to put it on your test drive list. For other reasons, related to Holden’s fall from grace, you may end up buying something else.

VALUE

The Commodore is built in Germany by Opel, which was until mid-2017 a General Motors subsidiary (like Holden) and is now in the hands of the French PSA Group, which also owns Peugeot and Citroen.

The Calais V Tourer, at $53,990, is a big, handsome, powerful and absolutely loaded Commodore wagon that’s pretending to be an SUV, with jacked-up suspension (for 20mm more ground clearance) and chunky plastic lower body and wheel arch cladding.

The General’s 235kW 3.6-litre naturally aspirated petrol V6/ nine-speed automatic feeds sophisticated adaptive all-wheel drive that, in corners, also features a continuously variable drive split between the rear wheels.

Apart from some cheap plastics, the cabin feels rich and sporty, with a raked windscreen, twin-cockpit front section and low seating position. Sumptuous, leather-wrapped, heated and cooled front seats include a massage function for the driver.

Heated rear seats, Bose audio, touchscreen infotainment with digital radio, voice control and navigation, wireless phone charging, fulllength sunroof and hands-free opening and closing tailgate are also standard.

The premium tech includes adaptive matrix LED headlights that automatically dip only those individual LEDs necessary to avoid frying an oncoming driver’s eyeballs.

Also standard are head-up display with navigation, remote engine start, automatic parking and 360 degree camera.

No other mid-size or large SUV at this sort of money comes close to this combination of performance, luxe and hi-tech hardware.

Now the bad news. The Commodore has the worst trade-in values of any new car or SUV on the market. Industry valuer Redbook lists a Calais V Tourer’s retained value at just 17 per cent after five years/50,000km.

That’s Redbook’s average wholesale price — comparable to what you could be offered as a trade in — for a car in average condition.

A Hyundai i30 Active averages 39 per cent. A Toyota Prado GXL averages 51 per cent.

How and why can a new model be almost worthless after five years? Does it matter?

The point is that dealers know a car with no friends when they see one and it’s now obvious that whatever brand loyalty Holden once had went out the window on October 20, 2017, the day they shut the factory gates in Elizabeth, SA.

COMFORT

Supportive seats and business class space are a given in the Calais but on country roads at speed the relatively soft suspension can thump and crash on bumps and potholes, transmitting road shock to the cabin.

Excessive wind noise, generated by body flex and imperfect sealing of the driver’s door, was also evident in the test car.

The long, low boot floor is easily extended with the 40-20-40 split fold rear seat to a flat two metres, and even in five-seater mode you get greater load capacity than many SUVs.

SAFETY

All the important boxes are ticked.

DRIVING

The 3.6 is a lusty, vocal device at the top end. Below 3000rpm, excellent throttle response, plus nine ratios to work with, almost disguise its relative lack of bottom end grunt compared with a smaller capacity turbo, petrol or diesel.

It will pull ninth at 100km/h, silently ticking over at just 1250rpm and returning amazing fuel economy (on regular unleaded) of 6-7L/100km. In town, though, a large capacity atmo petrol V6 pushing nearly 1.8 tonnes around is inevitably going to return mid to high teens.

Dynamics aren’t as taut as the lower, more firmly suspended RS Commodore wagon.

Compared with a similarly sized and priced SUV such as Toyota’s Kluger or Mazda’s CX-9, the Calais is almost a sports car.

It’s a highly capable and enjoyable drive, thanks to the relatively low centre of gravity, precise, intuitive steering, the drivetrain’s reardrive bias and cross axle torque distribution function plus quality Continental tyres.

HEART SAYS

I am one of the Holden faithful. There aren’t many of us left. Commodore forever.

HEAD SAYS

I want a big wagon that goes, steers, handles and stops like a real car rather than a ponderous, top heavy SUV. And this is as well equipped as a $100,000 luxury wagon.

ALTERNATIVES MAZDA6 ATENZA, FROM $51,190

Beautiful design, outstanding quality, great value and punchy 170kW/420Nm 2.5-litre turbo/six-speed auto/front-wheel drive. It has no SUV pretensions — look at a CX-9 if that’s what you want.

SUBARU OUTBACK 3.6R, FROM $50,440

The Outback doesn’t handle as well as the Calais but on the road it also drives more like a car than an SUV because it’s an elevated Liberty wagon. 191kW 3.6-litre V6/CVT/allwheel drive. Loaded with safety and luxe.