Holden handling hero hired by GWM

The Holden engineer famous for setting a lap record at the Nurburgring in a V8 Commodore ute has been handed the task of making GWMs ride and handle on Australian roads.

Rob Trubiani, who was a key vehicle development engineer contributing to the lauded Zeta platform and the VE/VF-generation Holden Commodore it underpinned, will join GWM Australia as product engineering manager in early April. 

Trubiani will be in charge of the new local tuning and engineering program GWM Australia announced last month as it confirmed a multi-year model rush and dramatic sales growth.

“We are delighted to have secured Rob as our new Product Engineering Manager,” GWM Australia marketing and communications chief Steve Maciver said.

“With a wealth of local ride and handling experience, we’re confident that Rob can help deliver an even better in-vehicle experience for our customers.

“With GWM now an established Top 10 brand in Australia, this is a commitment to all our local customers that delivering the best possible products for local tastes is a core part of our plans moving forward.”

GWM’s move to localise ride and handling reflects successful moves previously made by Hyundai and Kia in Australia. The latter still tunes every model it imports for local conditions.

Trubiani left Holden in 2020 and most recently worked for Segula Technologies, a French engineering outfit locally involved in the development of the right-hand drive Ford F-150.

His experience at Holden went well beyond the local Commodore, also tuning a wide variety of imported models from the Spark city car to the Colorado ute.

And while he is best known as the driver setting a new commercial vehicle lap record of 8:19.47 around the 20.8km ‘Green Hell’ in a VF Commodore SS-V Redline ute in 2013, Trubiani’s job won’t be to develop sports versions of existing models like a Cannon ute rival for the Ford Ranger Raptor.

Instead, the focus will be on sorting out the ride, handling and driver assist system behaviour of GWM’s mainstream models sold by its Haval SUV, Cannon commercial, Tank 4x4 and Ora electric brands in Australia.

Mediocre on-road behaviour and overly-intrusive overspeed, driver monitoring and lane keeping systems have been consistent criticisms of the GWM line-up.

“Let’s start building what we think our own GWM ride and handling is based on the resource that we bring in,” GWM Australia COO John Kett told carsales.

“We’ll flash that across all our products and then evolve it.”

Trubiani will work in tandem with China-based GWM engineers who will continue to visit Australia as part of the local validation of new models.

“We have had a lot of engineers coming down here from China evaluating road conditions, the environment and ADAS tuning – we even had eight engineers down here in January – and that will continue, but we feel we have to localise it even further,” Maciver said.

“So that is a part of the brand, taking ownership of that and localising cars even more for Australia.”

Maciver estimated first results of the program could be seen within six months.

“You have got to do evaluations, you have got to do benchmarking, you have then got to start taking measurements, got to drive it, got to get a feel for it.

“In theory you could be seeing – depending on the scale of the project – improvements coming through in four to six months.”

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