Holden Commodore to continue!
Development underway for all-new 2017 locally built large car from HoldenThe Holden Commodore name will continue on into an all-new locally built fifth generation in 2017.
Holden managing director Mike Devereux dropped the bombshell at a media preview of the upcoming VF Commodore at the company’s Port Melbourne headquarters this afternoon.
“We will launch another Commodore after this one,” Mr Devereux said, standing next to a VF Commodore, which will be formally revealed this Sunday.
The all-new Commodore will be built on a global architecture at the Elizabeth plant in Adelaide, alongside the second generation Cruze small car, which should enter production in 2015.
Mr Devereux would not divulge any details of the next Commodore’s technical basis, but confirmed that work had already started on the car.
It will most likely be based on the latest iteration of General Motors’ mid-sized Epsilon II architecture that currently underpins front-wheel drive models such as the Chevrolet Malibu and Impala, as well as several Buick models.
The announcement effectively quells speculation that the second model line at Elizabeth will be an SUV. However, both the new Cruze’s D2XX architecture and Epsilon II are highly flexible and capable of underpinning front and all-wheel drives and a variety of bodyshells including SUVs.
“A lot of folks have been speculating about whether this is the last Commodore… well I can categorically tell you we have started work on the next Commodore that comes after this one,” Mr Devereux declared.
“The interesting thing about the fascination with the Commodore name and the reason I wanted to lay that down today and end that speculation is that people love this nameplate and we are going to have another one of these.
“Right now we haven’t even started building the one called VF, so we will leave all that speculation for years from now.
“General Motors has started working on it [the Commodore beyond VF], the team here is obviously involved in that as we are involved in all sorts of things and I will say no more of it.
“I told you guys in January at the Detroit motor show that this [VF] would run through the end of 2016. After that tine we are going to be putting two global architectures into the plant and one of them will underpin the next Commodore.
“There is another Commodore coming after this one, we are going to build it in Adelaide on a fantastic new global architecture and you are just going to wait about three years to find out what that is.”
Asked if there had been any internal doubt about continuing Commodore on, Mr Devereux said: “We had absolutely no debate about that internally... zero debate.”
Holden will pull the covers off the new VF Commodore range this Sunday.
unveiling will take place in Melbourne’s Dockland precinct. There, the
new updated Commodore will debut in front of a crowd of invited guests,
Holden employees, media and VIPs. But you can be there too! Well, you
can see it live at least.
stream a live webcast of the Docklands unveiling commencing at around
10:35am this Sunday (Feb 10). In addition to the live stream, we will
also publish images of the new VF as well as details behind its design –
inside and out... Plus key technology take outs.
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