2013 Holden Colorado 7 LT And LTZ Launch Review
HOLDEN COLORADO7 REVIEW
Vehicle style: Large heavy-duty 4WD Wagon
Power/Torque: 132kW/470Nm
Fuel consumption listed: 9.4 l/100km | on test: not recorded
OVERVIEW
Holden’s new Colorado 7 4WD won’t become the darling of Double Bay or Toorak – it’s got the kind of ‘rough-head’ looks only a mother could love.
But if you’ve got a boat or a horse float to pull, or you want to lose yourself deep down a mountain gorge, this might be your car.
The Colorado 7 is no ‘soft-roader’; it’s a genuine 4WD ready for heavy-duty work or the big off-road trek. And, as a bonus, with seven seats, you can take the family (and the neighbour’s sprogs) along for the ride.
Sure, it’s no picture plate – the ‘wagon’ back looks a bit ungainly, and the hip-line doesn’t disguise its twin-cab ute origins – but there’s a certain pugilistic charm about its tough-truck nose and high-riding stance.
On road, it performed as we expected: half-truck, half-wagon, it lurches when cornering, but the 470Nm in the nose can really haul.
Off-road, it surprised. It has no trouble soaking up big whacks on a broken track, has the articulation and clearance to pick its way over sump-hunting rocks and deep ruts, and has effortless torque for a long hard climb.
We put the LT and LTZ across some challenging fire-trails in the State Forest behind Marysville in Victoria. To add some challenge to the task, a morning storm ‘freshened-up’ the red clay on the steepest sections.
- Colorado 7 | Colorado | Holden | SUVs | 4WDs
- Family Cars | Wagons | AIMS
THE INTERIOR
This is not the best interior on the planet. The three-tone grey/black plastic surfaces are a bit unrelenting and perhaps better-suited to a commercial vehicle.
While the dash is well laid-out, and the centre-stack has a modern look and feel, the rest of the interior doesn’t seem to integrate.
There are three or four ‘bitsy’ sections to the armrests in the doors; the metal surround to the gearshift seems to sit ‘on top’ rather than inset to the console; and the fit to the sections generally doesn’t have the tight alignments we now expect from modern cars.
In this, it’s not a patch on the Ranger interior (for instance).
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