Comments on: Modern Lotus Carlton could birth twin-turbo Commodore

By: Andrew M

Andrew M — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:56:50 +0000

Dave,
if they kill the commodore name,
with it will go a lot if its loyalists.

the Torana name wont be that great of a name to attract the family buyers.
Torana is a bogan name, and very few consumers would be able to see past it

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:34:47 +0000

Please Holden – It sounds great, but make it a TT Torana not Commodore!

Torana (relatively large midsize) is the car for the future where as the very large commodore is the car of the past.

By: Andrew M

Andrew M — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 08:24:45 +0000

you got a bit carried away there didnt you???
ha ha ha ha ha

i know how excited you get when you talk about the possibility of the upcoming “Torana” platform

By: Wheelnut

Wheelnut — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 08:11:51 +0000

Thanks Andrew – Yeah I remember; the Magna AWD is one of them which is why Tom Phillips wanted to have a go at making the 380 AWD as well as RWD – but Tokyo said No

By: Andrew M

Andrew M — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 07:58:42 +0000

wheelnut,
an aussie AWD family sedan has already been done.

By: Richo

Richo — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:42:17 +0000

heard that fred, dunno if it was for V8’s though was it?

By: Fred

Fred — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:46:05 +0000

Richo,
Word has it GM and Ford are looking at sharing engine development

By: Richo

Richo — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:01:59 +0000

i doubt holden will ever market a turbo 6 in australia again. Holden has always based their performance car heritage around V8s and i really doubt that will ever change. The only thing i can see changing is holden perhaps moving to smaller more efficient V8’s sometime in the future. GM have decided against doing a replacement for the northstar V8 in the states and instead are looking for a partner to develop a new DOHC smaller capacity V8 engine with, and there are strong rumors that the partner may be BMW. So its not beyond the realms of possiblity that in the future holden may run a smaller capacity DOHC BMW developed V8. Maybe around 4.4 or 4.6l capacity

By: PoisonEagle

PoisonEagle — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:30:08 +0000

If they use the Commodore platform, Ford are screwed because when the v6 arrives they will lose the cachet of the inline six. Then where are the unique selling points?

By: Richo

Richo — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:25:25 +0000

Yep Tom your right, GM powertrain have always massively de-tuned the LS1, LS2 and now LS3 V8 basically to improve economy. Thats why these engines are so easy to get power out of. Take a VT series 2 with 220kw. Add an exhaust, bigger intake, larger throttle body and do a maffless ECU tune as you say, you will easily get over 300kw, and a very reliable 300kw aswell because you haven’t actually changed any of the internal parts… the engines where always designed to produce the big power

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:06:53 +0000

Thats true Richo, we all know you can get 500+ hp easily out of LS engines. It just seems more special when Holden do it from the factory.

I mean, get a LS3, cam it, maffless tune, you’re already there.

By: GhisGT

GhisGT — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 05:52:24 +0000

Come on CarAdvice…

Did the Carlton spawn a TT Commodore at the time? No, it didn’t.

So, what would make you think this time around that they would re-engineer the entire car for a foreign turbo powerplant when they could just bolt on a huffer or two to their existing engine, ala Ford style with their twin cam 4-litre and de-compressed atmo xr6 engine for the xr6 turbo.

They wouldn’t even need the help of Lotus with so many, local Aussie tuners already selling aftermarket kits.

By: Richo

Richo — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 05:37:46 +0000

incedently HSV never did it “officially” like Vaxhall did because they where concerned about drivetrain longevity. They didn’t belive the manual gearbox could handle the torque loadings in the longer term

By: Richo

Richo — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 05:31:29 +0000

Tom, all Vauxhall did was take the HSV Coupe and smack on the walkinshaw supercharger kit and throw in a warranty. Incedently walkinshaw performance provide a warranty to cover the loss of the standard HSV warranty anyway. It’s exactly the same mate, the only difference is that Vauxhall made it “official”

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 05:19:22 +0000

Richo, getting a kit fitted to a car, and selling a car as a factory 500hp missile is a different story.

By: Richo

Richo — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:58:20 +0000

i was wrong again lol, the first VB was based on the opel rekford with an opel senator front on it. Opel thought that was such a shit hot idea that they copied it and stole the commodore name at the same time. So there ya go

Yep the old opel design definetly wasn’t a strong one Bret, despite holdens best efforts.

The VL design was still based on the VB commodore, shared the same chassis and everything, but the actual styling was done in house by holden. Up until that point the styling had been more or less carry over from opel. Holden also thoroughly redesigned the opel omega when creating the VN commodore and same again when designing the VT commodore. Compare the 1986 opel omega to an 1988 VN commodore and you will see that holden actually did an excellent job as the omega was a very boxy design. The VT commodore was also a huge improvement in styling over the 1996 opel omega, although the family resembelence is much strong in this model, holden clearly improved on what was a fairly “all over the place” design which the opel was.

By: Bret

Bret — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:47:57 +0000

Richo,
yeah knew all that, but each Commodore has an Opel style as an originator, but I can’t find the one that the VL was copied from.

And your “breaking in half” story goes well beyond the original test mule. All Commodores pre VE can suffer from a stretched floor if towing (and not always by doing the wrong thing either)

By: Richo

Richo — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:46:34 +0000

actually, sorry, the opel rekford formed the basis of the OPEL commodore, which was the more luxurious version of the rekford. THAT is the car holden snapped in half and that is the car they used to make the HOLDEN commodore. Thats also ofcourse where the commodore name came from. Holden originally where just going to “australianise” but in the end had to fairly comprehensively re-engineer it

By: Richo

Richo — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:42:00 +0000

just found out the VB commodore was based on the 1977 opel rekford, that was the car that holden engineers snapped in half! then the first opel omega in 1986 became the holden commodore in 1988. Incredibly the first omega won european car of the year in 1987! Who would have thought considering it formed the basis of the VN commodore which is comonly acknowledged as the worst of the commodores!

By: Richo

Richo — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:33:38 +0000

back to the VB commodore story where holden snapped an opel omega in half (i think they where called omega’s?) the opel engineers in germany refused to believe it was possible to do that so they had the broken car shipped to germany to inspect it. Needless to say that the replacement opel omega (which later formed the VN commodore) was a much much stronger car thanks to the lessons learnt!