Holden urges 'heartland' fans to drive new Commodore

Don't knock it till you've tried it.

That's the message from Holden boss Mark Bernhard, who claims the new Commodore ZB is a better drive than any of its rivals, including the Kia Stinger.

He's urged the Holden faithful, who have derided the decision to drop the local V8 and rear-wheel drive Commodore and apply the name it to its imported replacement, to have a steer before they have a whinge.

"There are plenty of strong opinions out there about how this car will perform," he said at the media launch of the ZB yesterday. "Will our heartland customers buy the Commodore? I challenge any of them; drive the car then have an opinion."

The ZB goes on-sale this month with front- and all-wheel drive, and four-cylinder and V6 engines, instead of the old V6 and V8 engines with rear-wheel drive.

"The car drives much better than any other vehicle in the competitive set," Bernhard told motoring.com.au.

"It's a great driving experience to get into a car like the Commodore with its road handling."

According to Holden, the first imported Commodore's 'competitive set' starts at the entry-level four-cylinder level against the Mazda6 and Toyota Camry and takes on the rear-drive turbocharged Stinger and the Volkswagen Arteon at the top-end.

Bernhard said the price positioning of the entry-level Commodore models above the highly-respected Mazda6 reflected the fact "it's a better car in the way it drives".

Bernhard based his bold statement on the fifth-generation Commodore's extensive local chassis tuning by the same team that has localised a series of imports in recent years and developed locally-built cars for years before that.

"We have been able to leverage years and years of our engineering team in terms of a car that Australian conditions and Australian drivers want."

Earlier, in his opening remarks, Bernhard had acknowledged the fundamental technical changes to the new Commodore, but insisted it still deserved the nameplate.

"The Commodore has been an iconic vehicle in Australia's automotive history, in our history," he said. "The all-new vehicle continues the tradition of what the Commodore has always been; it's a family car.

"Is it a true Commodore? Absolutely. We wouldn't call it that if we didn't think it could live up to the nameplate.

"The nameplate synonymous with our heartland is Commodore. Few nameplates stir the emotions like Commodore. Any car company around the world would love that passion."

"It's not a rear-wheel drive and it's not a V8 … and we are not hiding from any of that."

Despite his bullishness, Bernhard again confirmed Holden expected a significant fall in sales for the ZB Commodore compared to its locally built predecessor, the VF II, which sold 23,676 examples in its final year on-sale.

He revealed Holden had been working hard to convince state government and major fleet buyers to order the new Commodore.

"They are really excited by the product … but we are not at that point where we start to get orders. That will start to happen over the next 30, 60, 90 days.

"Anyone we spoke to with locally-made Commodore we are speaking to the same people with the Commodore as well.

"The number of fleet buyers will go down, but the split change between fleet and private we don't know as yet."

Holden also confirmed today it would continue with a three-year/100,00km warranty for the Commodore, despite experiments with extended deals up to seven years in 2017.

It also confirmed service intervals would be extended from nine to 12 months but cut from 15,000km to 12,000km. Three years total servicing cost was put at $817 for the petrol engines and $877 for the optional 2.0-litre turbo-diesel.

Click the link for our previous report on Commodore pricing and equipment.