Holden Berlina 2011 Review

Price Guide (recommended price before statutory and delivery charges): $43,490 (sedan) or $45,490 (Sportwagon)
Options fitted to test car (not included in above price): Prestige paint $500, full-size alloy spare $350, colour satellite navigation $990 (sedan)
Crash rating: Five stars (ANCAP)
Fuel: 91 RON ULP, E10 or E85
Claimed fuel economy (L/100km): 9.1 (sedan), 9.4  (Sportwagon)
CO2 emissions (g/km): 216 (sedan), 223 (Sportwagon)
Also consider: Ford Falcon G6; Toyota Aurion Prodigy (sedan); Volkswagen Passat; Skoda Superb; Ford Mondeo

About our ratings

The SIDI engine in Holden's 'Series II' VE range is better than ever -- yet it's still arguably a weak link of sorts. There is much to praise... it's an engine that delivers the same smooth, high-revving refinement reminiscent of a Mercedes-Benz V6 from a decade ago -- but therein lies the problem. Australians like their locally-built large cars to offer plenty of effortless performance from zero revs (see entry under 'Ford Falcon' in the encyclopedia). They want the engine to do all the heavy lifting, not the transmission.

Both the Berlinas on test -- sedan and Sportwagon -- were powered by the 3.0-litre SIDI V6, an engine that treads a fine line between sport and luxury, but won't challenge Toyota's Aurion in a straight line. The Berlina has more than enough grunt to keep up with traffic on the move, but there's a hint of hesitancy off the mark and -- more importantly -- it struggles to overcome its own weight and gearing when overtaking from speeds of 80km/h.

This is the ultimate test for some prospective buyers of the car. Forget "taking it around the block" for a test drive, take it out on the nearest stretch of freeway instead and kick it down a gear from 80km/h. The six-speed automatic transmission is perfectly ready to shift down a gear or two, but the engine just may not deliver the performance the driver needs or wants.

Drivers will find too that it may need to drop back about three gears on any sort of steep hill -- just to maintain speed. There's not a lot of torque below 3500 to 4000rpm. This engine is a screamer, simply put. It's good fun above 5000rpm, but how many Berlina-driving families want that? The larger 3.6-litre V6 from the Calais would make more sense for many Berlina owners. Then again, there's fuel economy to be considered.

After a couple of days driving the Sportwagon around (mostly on freeways), it was time to reset the car's trip computer, which had been showing an average fuel consumption of 10.0L/100km up to that point. With more urban driving thrown in, the figure rose to 13.4L/100km for the wagon. It's closer to what most owners will achieve -- not great, but possibly about right if the car came to the Carsales Network with a full tank of E85, instead of 91 RON unleaded. By comparison, with more open-road touring, the Berlina sedan returned a figure around 10.6L/100km.

Putting aside the vexed question of power versus economy, the Berlina is a very agreeable car. Easy to park given its size, plenty of rear-seat legroom for growing kids and adults, communicative steering that's spot on for weight, nice ride and handling, the list goes on...

For ride comfort, the Holden seems slightly overdamped at lower speeds, but the suspension is well sorted and everything is very smooth once the speed rises a little. The handling remains unflustered when the vehicle is pushed a little harder and even the Sportwagon was pretty tidy for a family wagon riding on comfy and quiet Goodyear 225/55 R17 tyres. The tyres were remarkably quiet in this car. It's rare to find a vehicle that can traverse coarse-grade hotmix with as little road noise as in either variant of Berlina. At freeway speeds too, there was a slight wind rustle but not much else at all -- not road- or drivetrain-related NVH.

While both Berlinas drew to a halt with a soft-braking action, the sedan's front pads were initially noisy; might have been due to a spot of rust on the discs, but the problem disappeared after the first day. The brake pedal in the Sportwagon seemed to lack feel, in the opinion of this reviewer. On at least a couple of occasions it was necessary to apply more pedal pressure as the car pulled up behind a stationary car. Stability control lets you know when it's working via an ABS-style vibration and there can be a distinct 'pull' felt as the car cancels out understeer with a little more braking from the inside/rear wheel.

Despite the stability control system keeping a weather eye out for understeer, the Berlina actually handles quite close to neutral and the electronic safety aid only gets busy as the tyres approach the limits of their adhesion -- and on dry bitumen that's commendably high. Both cars could be flung around fairly hard for cushy family hacks and even the wagon left the driver feeling confident that there was a wide margin for error.

There were the usual VE bugbears in the Berlina Sportwagon: Handbrake and A pillars. A close family member was unable to fathom how to release the handbrake and the writer still finds it necessary to look under and around the A pillars at T intersections or roundabouts. That said however, these are concerns that would be overcome after a week of familiarity with the car. An additional niggle in the Sportwagon was the rear-view mirror, which was large enough to provide an excellent view to the rear, but adjusting it was made harder by its proximity to the overhead console in the headlining.

Another area where the Berlina in its latest guise has not quite made the grade can be broadly described as mismatched design. One of our staff made a valid point when he compared the new-fangled Holden iQ display for infotainment in the centre fascia with the stark, barebones instrumentation in the binnacle ahead of the driver.

It's a problem that carries through to the exterior as well. In Series II form, the Berlina has sprouted a glitzy, chrome grille that might almost be described as 'vulgar'. It seems out of place with the otherwise clean and uncluttered exterior styling (but if your taste extends to juke box looks, you may feel the unadorned flanks are rather ascetic).

If Holden wants to offer Berlina buyers some chrome, perhaps throwing in some chrome strips along the sides might complement the grille and fit the look of the car -- except that would then leave the Calais nowhere to go. To each their own, but it's the writer's opinion that the detail styling of the Berlina was not quite one thing or the other.

Where comfort is concerned, however, the Berlina really fits the bill. The seats were excellent: supportive and comfortable with plenty of adjustment -- and without being too soft and soggy in the cushioning.

If there's one minor niggle to mention concerning the driver's seat in particular, it's the freestyle control placement -- manual fore and aft adjustment at the front, electric height/base tilt adjustment at the side and recline adjustment from a manual knob at the base of the backrest. Yes, Holden is not the only company guilty of this, but in a Berlina would it break the bank to go with all-electric controls clustered in the same location?

There were a few particularly nice touches in the Berlina's cabin; one-touch starting, for one. Turn the key to Start and then release -- and the engine would crank over until it fired, without any need to hold the key against the spring loading. The wiper and indicator stalks were nicely damped and easy to use. Holden has invested some of its R&D dosh on auto-on/off headlights, which is money well spent, in our opinion.

Still on the subject of ergonomics, the view of the instruments is exceptional -- the upside of a spartan design for the instrument binnacle. It is the Ponderosa of readout legibility -- plenty of real estate.

At least part of the reason for the instruments being so easy to read can be traced back to the steering wheel, which is very large in diameter. This is another of those quirks that Commodore drivers would put behind them after a week of ownership, but the helm-like quality of the wheel is initially disconcerting. It's like driving an S-Class Merc from the 1970s.

The iQ infotainment interface is mostly intuitive to use. It struggles with pairing a Bluetooth phone with quite the same ease as some German prestige cars can achieve, but at least re-acquiring the Bluetooth connection is easy enough once the phone is paired to the car. It will download music from a Bluetooth-equipped phone, as promised by Holden, and the hard drive for the audio system had a CD of songs copied across, so that's another worthwhile feature of the system.

There are two reasons why you might settle on the Sportwagon rather than the sedan. Rear-seat access is just a little easier in the Sportwagon, without the sweeping roofline of the sedan -- calling for adults to duck their heads as they enter or exit the vehicle. The wagon will also tote around a bit more junk, but it does so with the potential for rattle and clatter joining you in the cabin. By contrast, junk in the boot of the sedan is isolated from the passengers.

Worth noting though, the Berlina's boot is not fully lined -- and buyers might expect something a little better than exposed box sections in the bootlid for their $40,000+. It does come with gas struts for easy opening and a wide-open load aperture as some sop to the owner's expectations.

Overall, both the sedan and wagon Berlina variants offer outstanding comfort and refinement for the money. There's plenty of room inside and safety is as good as you could wish for when you're carting kids around, making them ideal for families in all respects.

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