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Five generations of Holden Commodore
The Holden Commodore is so ingrained in our Kiwi motoring lives that it can sometimes be easy think that it has been around forever, but it hasn’t. In fact the all-new ZB Commodore is only the fifth generation of this iconic model. Today we take a look at all five generations of Commodore.
First (VB, VC, VH, VK, VL)
First introduced as the VB in 1978, the Holden Commodore was a shocking thing that offended the Holden faithful by being both smaller and more foreign than the HZ Kingswood it replaced. A reaction to the 1973 oil crisis, the smaller Commodore was based on the fourcylinder Opel Rekord E body and platform, with an Opel Senator nose tacked on it. It even took its name from the ‘‘Opel Commodore’’.
Heavily reinforced for Aussie conditions, the Opel-based Commodore was initially seen as a massive mistake by Holden, but by the final version of the first-generation car (the VL from 1986) it was outselling the much larger Ford Falcon.
Second (VN, VP, VR, VS)
Despite the fact that the smaller VL was selling better than the Falcon, Holden decided to take the Commodore back up to Falcon size with its second generation and based it on the Opel Omega platform, complete with a widened floor pan, for the VN from 1986.
Holden replaced the Nissan engines from the VL with a locallybuilt 3.8-litre version of a Buick V6 (that had been designed for FWD applications) and the 5.0-litre V8 was tweaked to pump out a massive 165kW. This generation of Commodore was also sold as the Toyota Lexcen as part of the spectacularly unsuccessful modelsharing plan that was part of Australian government reforms in 1989.
Third (VT, VX, VY, VZ)
For the third-generation VT in 1997, Holden once again went with a widened Opel Omega platform, although it strongly considered simply rebadging the Omega, or even reusing the VS’s underpinnings.
Holden pushed hard for Buick to take a LHD version of the third-gen car to ensure the Commodore’s future business case, but this never eventuated. However, the work done on a LHD version enabled Holden to break into several foreign markets including parts of Asia, South America, the Middle East and South Africa. It was during this generation that the illfated AWD models (never actually named Commodore) were launched, quietly disappearing at the end of the VY’s model cycle due to low sales.
Fourth (VE, VF)
The 2006 VF Commodore was the only real ‘‘all-Aussie’’ Commodore, being entirely designed and built in Australia after Opel abandoned the large car segment in 2003. Great things were expected of the Zeta platform that was developed by Holden for the wider General Motors family, but that whole messy bankruptcy thing got in the way and the only non-Commodore based car to ever appear on it was the revived Chevrolet Camaro from 2010.
The VE was sold in the US as the Pontiac G8 and Chevrolet SS, but the only version that really caught on in the States was the Chevrolet Caprice PPV that was only available to police departments. This failure to fire in the US was largely the last nail in the coffin for an Australian-developed and built Commodore.
Fifth (ZB)
The first Commodore to not be built in Australia is actually a rather appropriate throwback to the Aussie icon’s origins by being both smaller and more foreign to the car it replaces. Also based on an Opel (the Insignia), the ZB Commodore is far closer in size to the VF than the VB ever was to the Kingswood, however.
Holden had a large say in the Insignia’s development of the ZB/ Insignia, insisting on the addition of a V6 engine - something that Opel had no interest in initially doing. Subsequently Buick also adopted the V6 for its US version of the car, the Regal.