Holden Coupe60

Applaud loud enough and long enough, and General Motors might - just might - consider a Monaro encore. GM Holden's new chairman and managing director says so. Mark Reuss fast-tracked his move from Motown so he would be able to present the Melbourne motor show's undisputed star, and best kept secret, the Coupe 60. A few days later, he's explaining to Wheels what it would take for the two-door beauty to be put into production.

Reuss begins by asking if a car offering the traditional Holden proportions of the Monaro coupe is a money maker. These days, with half of Holden's production exported, it's important that the right mix of models is rolling off the company's Elizabeth, South Australia, production line. "We want to make sure we're doin' the right global portfolio," says Reuss.

"If the business [case] for something like this makes sense, then we're gonna look at it," Reuss promises. "If it doesn't, it probably will live as one of the greatest concept cars ever done."

Pressed for detail of exactly what it would take to construct a solid business case for production of the coupe, Reuss clams up. "I can't really speculate on it," he says, adding that all GM and Holden are interested in right now is gauging reaction to the car.

But then he helpfully itemises the unknowns that stand in the way of a straightforward response. "I can't answer that because I don't know exactly what it takes to engineer and tool it," Reuss says. "[or] what export or import volumes we have, because I can't answer where we'd make it. I'd love to be able to tell you it's 60,000 units for the Australian home market and we're home free, but that's not reality."

He's right about that. Between October 2001 and December 2005, a total of 12,829 examples of the previous Monaro generation were sold here.

Reuss has obviously been doing his homework since learning in January that he was to replace Englishman Chris Gubbey as Holden boss. But he only learned a week out that the Coupe 60 would play such a major role in his public debut at the Melbourne motor show. And Reuss only saw the car for the first time three days before it rolled, 6.0-litre V8 rumbling, down the glossy black catwalk of Holden's stand.

When first shown the Coupe 60 by Holden design director Tony Stolfo, Reuss was blown away. "The car is just gorgeous," he enthuses. "You just want to put your hands on the surface, because the work on it is spectacular."

But the sensuous sculpting that so thrilled Reuss isn't new. Design manager of the Coupe 60 project, Peter Hughes, says Holden began sketching a two-door version of the VE Commodore six years ago.

"Once the VE was set in concrete, we started looking at a coupe," says Hughes, who led the team that designed the 2006 Commodore sedan's exterior. "That was about late 2002."

The coupe design was developed to quite an advanced stage, he explains. "We pushed, and did an experimental full-size clay, and that started in about February '03. We kept that going through 2004, developing and honing it."

Work on the clay coupe continued, he says, even as Holden Design was seeing the VE sedan through its preparations for production. "Then it kinda just all came to a halt about 2005," says Hughes.

But a couple of years later, along came an irresistible opportunity. "With the 60th anniversary [of Holden] there was a chance to actually show what we'd developed," he says. "That all fired up again in about July last year."

So the Coupe 60 is damned near identical to the Commodore coupe that was shelved three years ago. "Nearly all the sheet metal remains much the same," confirms Hughes. But for the Holden 60th anniversary motor show special, the team led by Hughes wanted to add a little spice. "We wanted to give the show car a different personality; take it to the extreme."

Hughes already had an idea that he felt would work for the Coupe 60. "We've had the idea of doing this kind of gentleman's track car for quite a while," he says. "I actually wanted to apply this to just a normal VE and show it." That never happened, of course, but when the show coupe project was given the go-ahead, Hughes saw his moment. "We brought the two ideas together into the Coupe 60."

"We didn't want to actually do a race car," he continues. But the Coupe 60 has been influenced by a V8 Supercar. The front splitter, rear diffuser, centre-lock wheels and side-exit exhausts are obvious points of reference.

In some respects, Hughes believes the Coupe 60 is more technically sophisticated than a race car. "It's actually better than a V8 Supercar," he says of the Coupe 60's undertray. Made from carbonfibre, the full-length tray is flat. "It's perfectly clean underneath," says Hughes. "I'm assuming that it would be a lot more slippery than a normal VE..."

Inside Coupe 60 are a pair of carbonfibre-shelled racing seats, which slide far enough forward for rear passengers to access the carbonfibre-embellished pair of rear seats. All positions are equipped with four-point racing harnesses. In front of the driver is a flat-bottomed steering wheel, behind this is a steering column-mounted binnacle containing a race-style LCD display.

Hughes, who spent a couple of hours driving the Coupe 60 around Holden's Lang Lang Proving Ground for press-kit photography before the Melbourne motor show, says the front seats are tolerable. The rear seats? "You can sit in them," he says, but adds they're "more for show than go".

The Coupe 60 may be from Australia's own brand, but the Melbourne show one-off was actually constructed in Japan. "All the design work was done here," explains Holden design director Tony Stolfo, "and it was basically assembled in Japan."

If it hadn't been for Holden's big birthday, he insists, the coupe would probably have remained a secret for years. "The public only get to see half the things we actually develop," says Stolfo. "If it wasn't for the 60th anniversary, we probably wouldn't have shown this to the public for a long time."

Once the decision was made, there was another problem. Holden's own shop was flat-out working on the GMC Denali XT concept for the Chicago motor show in February. The closeness of the timing meant the job of building the Coupe 60 had to be sub-contracted to outsiders.

So a complete VE Commodore SS V was shipped to Japan, to serve as the basis for the project. Stolfo won't name the company responsible, or even reveal its location.

The sedan's body was snipped off, leaving a rolling chassis complete with rockers. The Japanese company then shortened the car's rear rails, and set about building a new upper body from carbonfibre and fibreglass.

Holden had already made its decision on the show car's drivetrain, choosing a 6.0-litre Gen IV V8 with fuel-saving AFM (active fuel management) cylinder deactivation system and E85 ethanol-petrol blend fuel capability, teamed with a six-speed manual transmission. "We felt this was probably the most appropriate powertrain, seeing that we did want to show a V8 configuration to celebrate Holden's history," Stolfo says. "We also wanted to [show] that we're looking at green solutions with V8 applications."

While the Coupe 60's engine was chosen to suit Holden in 2008, there was never any question of deviating from the essentials of the coupe design Holden had shelved back in 2005. The designers had lowered the occupants' hip-point so they could get the steeper (by 2.3 degrees) screen angle and lower (by 60mm) roof they wanted. The four-seat configuration of the cabin was dictated by the need to taper the rear section of the coupe's turret. "Five seats wouldn't allow you to pull the rear glass in and get the terrific shoulders over the rear quarters, which is what this coupe is all about," Stolfo says.

Likewise, the decision that the coupe should have no B-pillar wasn't up for debate. "The desire to do a two-door coupe is always the desire to do a pillarless two-door coupe," states Stolfo simply.

The design director stresses that the essential engineering background studies, to assess what would be needed to prepare the coupe for the assembly-line, have not been done. But Stolfo doesn't see any major issues. "It's a very production-ready design," he says. "There's nothing extreme on the car that would stop us from actually going into production if the business case is there."

The view from GM headquarters in Detroit is that there are more important things to be spending money on right now. Bob Lutz, GM's straight-talking global product development boss, is pessimistic when asked if the Coupe 60 has any chance of going into production. "Sadly, probably not," is his reply. "You know I'd like it," he continues, "but we have to allocate the funds by priority, and that now means any fuel-saving technology."

But a sustained burst of public foot stomping, clapping and whistling may be enough to have the business case considered just one more time. Within hours of the Coupe 60 being revealed, Holden enthusiast website www.LS1.com.au had launched an on-line petition calling for the concept to be turned into showroom reality. If you like the Coupe 60 enough, why not add your name to the list?

Even if the gesture doesn't succeed, the 20-plus members of the Holden Design team who worked on the initial coupe and then the Coupe 60 are sure to appreciate it.

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