A Christmas bromance
The Holden Colorado Rox is probably not the most sensible vehicle for a staycation. But we did it anyway. Damien O’Carroll reports.
‘Oh no, what have I done?’’ That was my first thought after hanging up the phone after a conversation in which I had accepted a vehicle to drive over the Christmas break.
For those of you unfamiliar with motoring journalists, that is not usually the sort of thing we think when offered a car to test. But then, this was no ordinary automobile. It would require some logistical planning just to get it near my house.
I had just committed myself to two weeks with the Holden Colorado Rox as my only form of transport. Something that worried me no small amount, because I was pretty much convinced it would be fairly awful both around the city and on the open road.
Not the ideal attitude to be going into a road test with, I grant you, but I fully expected to utterly hate the Rox at the end of two weeks using it as my only form of transport around Auckland and be truly happy to give it back.
After all massive mud tyres and a serious off-road setup do not make for the ideal city commuter . . .
The first obstacle was the sixinch lift kit and monster 35-inch tyres meant that the Rox simply wouldn’t fit in my car port. The 150mm extra track width that those enormous mud tyres also brought to proceedings made it a marginal thing to actually fit down my narrow driveway in the first place. Thankfully, my generous car-enthusiast neighbour was kind enough to let me berth the monster Holden in his driveway during my time with it, so we were on.
However, I still didn’t like it. While I get the off-road mods, heavily accessorised utes have never been my thing – I don’t really see the point – but I wouldn’t ever be critical of someone who had or wanted one. After all, taste is a personal thing, and we should all be so lucky to drive something that makes us happy.
But here’s the thing; the Rox is just so excessively over-the-top that it very quickly forced itself into my affections just by its sheer silliness – ridiculous height that required running boards with step extensions, glowing red LEDlit wheel arches, fake bonnet bulge and all.
Two things in particular made me fall in love with the Rox though – the first purely silly, the second technically impressive.
First the silly; the Rox has an active exhaust enhancer that makes it sound truly monstrous (despite having no modifications done to the engine whatsoever). A range of big, throaty diesel V8 rumbles, burbles or roars are selectable from a connected phone app.
Yes, it is pointless. Yes, it is silly. But it is also hilariously funny and sounds wonderfully aggressive. It can also be turned off if you don’t want to annoy your neighbours, but if you are the sort of person who will go to the trouble and expense of installing such a thing, then you probably don’t care if you annoy your neighbours anyway . . .
The technically impressive things that made me love the Rox were its tyres and general ride quality.
Mud tyres have come a long way in the past few years. Previously insanely noisy and seriously lacking in grip on normal road surfaces, modern mud tyres are now easily comparable to all-terrain tyres in terms of noise and wet weather grip, making them actually usable on the road without compromising sanity or safety.
The level of wet grip was impressive in the Rox, although the high centre of gravity still made it a thing to reserve a cautious level of respect for in the rain, while the ride quality was also surprisingly good.
But don’t take that to mean ‘‘car-like good’’ though – but not too far removed from ute-like good. It was impressive given the extensive modifications, and far above anything else I have driven that is this modified for off roading.
While the levels of noise from the tyres was impressively low, this gain was all cancelled out by the sheer volume of wind noise (and, of course, resistance) from the remarkable array of stuff attached to the roof.
The huge spotlights attached to a hydraulic ram to pop them up or lay them down, the roof tray that housed the spare tyre (of course with another massive 35-inch mud tyre), the custom sports bar on the tray – hell, even the huge scoop on the custom carbon fibre bonnet – all conspired to produce a literal cacophony of howling, whooshing and rumbling.
But that is par for the course when you start adding functional off-road accessories – so just crank the stereo up and it doesn’t matter.
Well, it does matter still – in a fuel economy sense, because the Rox welded itself to an average 13L/100km and stayed there my entire time with it. At least it was consistent.
The Rox’s overall demeanour on the road was surprisingly well behaved too – it didn’t wander all over the road like the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon on mud tyres I recently drove, despite the ponderous steering that lacks much in the way of self-centring (thanks again to the massive mud tyres) – and it was surprisingly comfortable.
And it was not as impractical as I was expecting around town either – despite the increase in width, it fitted easily into parking spaces (once you got used to it) and the only real compromise was the extreme height that meant any visit to a mall, or anything with indoor or underground parking, meant I had to park quite a long way away and walk. But let’s face it; I need the exercise anyway.
So, no, I didn’t hate it and I genuinely did feel sad having to give it back. It was a delightfully fun vehicle to drive, despite its imperfections and impracticalities, and was a guaranteed conversation starter.
It was created to attract attention, and it certainly did that during my time with it. But put it this way – the sort of person who will come up to you to talk about something so excessively silly with enthusiasm is usually always worth talking to.