Big Aussie muscle cars are almost always Bathurst-bred. In September 1997, then-Drive editor, Phil Scott, drove the new hot rods from Holden.
Story originally published on 28 September, 1997
It’s black, as sinister as a Stealth fighter and requires of its customers $75,000 and a healthy streak of exhibitionism.
Depending on your point of view, the Holden Special Vehicles GTS is an Aussie performance car legend, inspiring visions of Brocky and Bathurst glory, or a really silly idea: a bloated, ultra-blokey V8 whose spiritual post code is Sylvania Waters.
The GTS is one of eight just-released models from Holden’s fast-car factory in the lead-up to the annual V8 race at Mount Panorama, all based on the new VT Commodore. They are to the nation’s motoring magazines what Diana, Princess of Wales, is to the Women’s Weekly.
Whacking one on the cover is a guaranteed circulation booster, with new models routinely greeted by euphoria, despite past efforts with notoriously dodgy brakes. The mythology is long established; the HSV brand name is now worth its weight in gold.
Among the faithful, interest in HSV’s products is almost religious in its fervour and reflected in the $2 million worth of T-shirts, caps, jackets and other branded merchandise sold each year. The company hypes its Internet site as the most popular car address in the country and, with the release of the new models, claims that visits peaked at 130,000 hits a day, ranking it number 12 in Australia last week. Then again, HSV has never been shy of The Big Claim to match its big cars.
These are Holdens with a ‘haitch’, dirty big, in-yer-face V8s with a heritage that says Monaro but uppity aspirations which lately hint at Mercedes. The customers may prefer bourbon and Coke, but HSV is heavily into names like Grange (after the Penfolds red) to high-zoot its image. Under the burgundy paint, the Grange is $85,000 worth of hot-rod Statesman. A mellow classic? Hardly.
HSV has lately convinced Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett (another mellow statesman) to ditch the white stretch limo and try one of its Senator models (below) for a month of official engagements. The State pennant is about to flutter above a lumpy 5.7-litre V8 capable of projecting him to the legal limit in 6.2 seconds and on to a top speed somewhere between 250 and 252.9km/h.
This makes HSV’s street brawler the fastest production car ever built in Australia. With Kennett’s recent driving record this may prove too much of a good thing. The irony: in Kennett’s Victoria, they lock people up for exceeding 130km/h.
The Premier’s loan car will be Rubens red, which is appropriate because the entire HSV range has gone Rheubenesque.
The GTS, all ground-sniffing snout, spoilers and wings, weighs a lumpy 1740kg. To put this into perspective, a long wheelbase BMW 7 Series limo weighs only 76kg more and the porky Mercedes flagship, the S-class, an extra 150kg.
Holden’s top-of-the-range Senator Signature Estate manages to tip the scales within 30kg of the elephantine Mercedes!
This laying on of lard comes courtesy of the bigger VT Commodore body shell and more lavish equipment. Even so, it’s the equivalent of taking a couple of beefy detective sergeants along for every ride. HSV is so sensitive on the issue it forgot to provide the avoirdupois figures to an adoring press corps.
Weight, of course, is the enemy of the performance car. It reduces acceleration, steals agility from handling, makes directional changes more ponderous and takes a heavier toll on brakes. For much the same reason, you don’t see too many fat athletes and, in motorsport, the cradle of HSV’s engineering, kilos are counted with Jenny Craig fanaticism. Success is built around a car’s power-to-weight ratio.
The GTS has plenty of the former but way too much of the latter. It features the more powerful of HSV’s revised V8s – a 5.7-litre making a brawny 220kW and massive amounts of torque (also known as GRUNT!).
This is a big number for an emissions-cleansed street engine, especially for one which can trace its roots back to the late 1960s. It’s a bit like grandpa’s axe but the fundamentals remain: cast iron construction, overhead valves and plenty of cubic inches, for which Detroit still believes there is no substitute.
Technology tends to disprove this. BMW makes a much lighter all-alloy V8 which is half as big but makes 81 per cent of the Holden’s power, straight out of the box. BMW’s 4.0-litre V8 needs only 70 per cent of HSV’s 5.7 litres to produce 95 per cent of the power. That, too, is in a very mild state of tune. The numbers tell a story of relative technical superiority, but that argument will cut no ice with the Aussie V8 faithful.
They won’t give a toss that HSV’s bent-eight is carrying more weight than a Melbourne Cup favourite and is therefore only marginally more accelerative than the superseded (cheaper and lighter) model.
The new one is still devilishly quick (covering the ground-to-100km/h one-third faster than a standard Commodore) but is not in the same league as European hot-shoe specials such as the BMW M5 and Mercedes AMG E55.
While HSV chief John Crennan talks about wooing customers of those brands to the new range (he also wants to “youthen [sic] up the image”), history suggests the two are as compatible as oil and water.
For all the fancy talk (and fancy HSV prices that range from $51,500 for the poverty model through to an astonishing $94,140 for a gussied-up Caprice) it’s a safe bet there will be no HSV Commodores in the Bathurst car park next weekend for the big one.
Nope, the traditional date for the running of the 1000km race has been pinched by the smaller super touring cars: brands like Audi and BMW, with engines less than half the size of the booming V8s. Mount Panorama’s aging heroes have taken their Falcons and Commodores off in a huff, moving to a date two weeks further on into October. Feelings between the two camps make the Super League-ARL battle look mild.
Given that background, no potential customer of the GTS is going to look sideways at an Audi. Except perhaps to spit at it. Likewise, no white-collar BMW driver is going to go all weak at the knees with an HSV brochure on the desk. It’s a pity, for there is room for both approaches.
Despite the daunting price tag, the GTS is much more refined than any previous HSV model. It is more supple, makes less noise (of both the good and bad kinds), has vastly improved brakes and has stepped up a few rungs on the sophistication ladder. But it’s overwhelmingly a meaty, big-biceps blokes’ car – one where gold jewellery, receding hairlines and blood pressure problems will feel right at home.
Real blokes NEED a six speed manual gearbox, broad-beamed seats that resemble those in the Space Shuttle and an expansive cabin. They like the instant g-r-r-r-runt of a big V8 and mourn the loss of that old, deep-chested, rich rumble from the exhaust. Tickle the throttle a bit and the burble turned quickly to a bark.
Nowadays, the smog cops, the noise cops and the rule-making cops in Canberra have seen to it that the GTS sounds hollow, muted, almost neutered. Way too polite for wearers of thick gold-chains.
But it doesn’t matter. This V8 muscle car thing is tribal and dates back to the L34 Toranas, the monster Monaros and Brocky’s Holden Dealer Team road cars. You either have the faith or you don’t.
These days, like the cars, the true believers are growing older, making less noise and putting on more weight.
Hardware horrors
Good hardware doesn’t come cheap with HSV.
A replacement Bridgestone 18-inch tyre costs $1065, and a premium brake system on the GTS adds around $2750 to the price. If stopping well in the basic Club Sport model is required, add $5550.
How fast, how much?
The GTS, with its 220kW engine, lists at $69,750 for the automatic and $70,950 for the six-speed manual. According to Motor magazine, it sprints from rest to 100km/h in 6.16 seconds and covers 400m in 14.34 seconds. Top speed: 250.1km/h
The V8 til 98?
A new Chevrolet V8 is under consideration to replace Holden’s existing big banger, although this is unlikely to happen before 1999, sources suggest.
Fat equipment, fatter prices
HSV’s new Senator models are both based on the Calais, adding substantially to the price but also equipment levels and weight.
Style central
The HSV range is the work of Scottish designer Ian Callum, whose credits include one of the prettiest cars of the 1990s, the Aston Martin DB7.
He works for the TWR Group in the UK, which owns Holden Special Vehicles and splits the profits with Holden.
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