US hosts preview of new Holden
From Tennessee to a road near you soon: Acadia SUV
Holden’s all-new Acadia SUV had a presidential-style reveal in the capital recently with the US Ambassador Scott Brown hosting journalists at the official residence.
The Acadia SUV launches later this year and it will be the first time Holden has offered a GMC-based product in its line-up. Built at General Motor’s Spring Hill plant in Tennessee, the vehicle is a full-sized sevenseater but is set to be the flagship for Holden New Zealand.
It is powered by a 3.6-litre, V8 petrol engine paired with a ninespeed advanced automatic transmission.
Ambassador Brown and his wife, US journalist Gail Huff Brown, hosted a group of New Zealand journalists for a lunch at the century-old residence.
Coincidentally, just as the lunch began, one of the Brown’s daughters rang from the USA and told her dad that she was planning to buy an Acadia.
Before lunch was a presentation for the Acadia by GM Holden’s lead development engineer, Dan Pinnuck.
The Acadia was tuned Downunder by GM Holden staff for our road conditions. Using lessons learned from recent Commodore and Colorado programmes, Holden engineers focused on delivering the direct steering and composed ride.
Adding to early local engineering work, Holden is also putting vehicles through real-world testing until launch this year. Pinnuch said that, using a fleet of 14 vehicles to accumulate a share of 1.5 million testing kilometres, the the tuning included suspension hardware, damper tuning, steering calibration and passive suspension co-developed.
“Our sport mode is too aggressive for US roads . . . but this is easily the most comfortable car in our portfolio.”
The Acadia is available in frontwheel-drive and AWD that has preemptive torque control. The frontwheel-drive mode has normal, sport, snow and trailer modes, while the AWD has 4x4 and off road settings.
It has an extensive array of safety features including 360-degree cameras, parking assistance, cross traffic alert plus autonomous emergency braking that recognises pedestrians and cyclists.
It also has lane keep assist that can detect the edge of the road even when there’s no marking.
The Acadia is the first Holden to have traffic sign recognition, another first in a GM product outside of Europe.
Holden NZ will reveal prices closer to launch date, later this year.