Holden Monaro resurrected

The modern Holden Monaro built between 2001 and 2006 was a much-loved and engaging to drive unicorn produced by the relatively tiny Australian car manufacturing industry until a decade or so before its untimely death.

Now it’s been reborn. Sort of.

Based on the US export-market 2005 Pontiac GTO, which was a rebadged Monaro for North America, this modified design was created by The Sketch Monkey (aka Marouane Bembli) and highlights just how good Holden’s original Aussie design was.

The large rear-wheel drive coupe’s long bonnet, athletic profile and striking stance perfectly captured Australia’s automotive culture of the early 2000s, when Holden was turning a profit and V8s were not an endangered species.

This intriguing design takes the classic Monaro shape – penned by then-Holden design chief Mike Simcoe, who is now General Motors' global design boss – and blends in modified Acura Integra headlights, Dodge Charger bonnet vents and wheels, and the lower front bumper of a Chevrolet Camaro.

Bembli admits the car is a “…little bit of a Frankenstein design…” but the result is suitably brawny and wouldn’t look out of place wob-wobbing down main streets in the US or Australia.

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The third-generation, VT Commodore-based Holden Monaro, which spawned the HSV Coupe and was even offered with AWD, was exported across the globe. In the US it was sold as the Pontiac GTO, in the Middle-East as the Chevrolet Lumina SS and in the UK as the Vauxhall Monaro.

The Monaro and its spin-offs were available with V6 and V8 engines in a range of different sizes and tunes over its six-year lifespan, maxing out at around 300kW with the HSV Coupe GTS.

However, there was also a big-daddy Monaro-based race car dubbed the HRT 427. As well as bespoke suspension, magnesium wheels and a carbon-fibre bonnet, the track-only machine packed an almighty 7.0-litre (427 cubic-inch, hence the name) LS7 V8 donated by the Corvette C5-R, producing 418kW at 6000rpm.

If Holden was still around and making a profit, and if the Monaro wasn’t axed… would the Australian car-maker have continued the hallowed V8 coupe legacy it began in 1968?

Probably not.

If the Monaro had survived a little longer and made it into the VE Commodore era, it would have looked like the 2008 Holden Coupe 60 concept car, a two-door prototype designed to celebrate Holden’s 60th birthday at the 2008 Melbourne motor show.

All we need now is for the gorgeous AU Ford Falcon Coupe concept of 2001 to get a digital once-over, allowing blue-blooded Aussie muscle car fans to join the nostalgic nirvana.

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