HSV GTS E2 2010 Review

HSV E2 GTS

Road Test

Price Guide (recommended price before dealer and statutory charges): $80,990
Options fitted to test car (not included in above price): Brake upgrade (includes six-piston calipers and gloss-black-finished 20-inch wheels) $3790
Crash rating: five star ANCAP
Fuel: 95 RON petrol
Claimed fuel economy (L/100km): 14.8
CO2 emissions (g/km): 352
Also consider: FPV GT-E; Lexus IS F

About our ratings

It takes plenty of effort to ignore the outlandish body add-ons and in-yer-face colour palette when confronted with HSV's latest flagship.

Indeed, the E2 GTS is, almost by definition, hard to ignore... Or hide... I'd barely parked it outside Chez Sinclair before the teenaged and early-20s neighbourhood car buffs were assembling out front, eager to hear the fruity bimodal exhaust and poke sticky fingers through the standard 20-inch wheels' spokes and touch the bright yellow 'HSV Enhanced' six-piston calipers for real. Perhaps the daylight running lamps attracted them...

However, if you can forget about the hoon car looks and drive the big HSV with an open mind, what really surprises is not its performance (which is prodigious), but rather its high level of refinement.

There I've said it. Or rather written it -- HSV and refinement in one sentence... Though 'our' GTS was a manual, it's not hard to imagine how polished the $2000-more-expensive six-speed auto version of this car will be. In manual form it demands some hand/foot coordination to keep things super smooth, but such is the glitch-free nature of the powertrain calibration that 1-3-5 are the only gears you need in 90 per cent of traffic conditions.

At low and middling throttle there's a pleasant, hushed and almost European quality to the engine note. Even over Melbourne's tram tracks and the like the MRC-regulated (Magnetic Ride Control) suspension is devoid of the crashing and bashing that some high-cost imported brand's sports saloons impose. In the cabin the outside world is hushed and somehow more distant than other Commodore-based offerings.

Sure the GTS is not perfect and it's more than double the cost of the basic donor Commodore, but there's been a fair bit of magic worked by the wizards at Clayton. Even confirmed Europhiles won't help but be impressed.

Faults or nitpicks? The unadorned mid section of the car grates with the customised front and rear ends and we'd like a bit more differentiation inside, but economic rationalism means this is a bridge too far.

Also the steering's too heavy for some, but the reward is the ability to place what is a large car on the piece of road you choose with a great degree of accuracy. Thanks to revised front-end geometry, sharp and consistent turn-in is retained, even under hard braking. This is not the case with lesser Commodores or even other HSVs.

We only had a short window of opportunity to give the GTS a thrash -- and even that was tempered by OTT Xmas police enforcement. Luckily, nearly every other review we've read on the car (more from the E2 range launch deals with the pointy end of its performance envelope. Truth is our 'suburban' week of commuting was better aligned with what 90 per cent of GTS buyers will do 90 per cent of the time.

Those buyers will enjoy the effortless performance and very probably the attention the car generates every time it's parked. They'll be more than happy to live with the 17-18L/100km the car drinks around town.

Yours truly is not one of those buyers... Despite its disarming level of powertrain and chassis sophistication, the GTS is simply too conspicuous...

Mind you a toned down Senator with the same front-end and powerplant. Now that could be just what the local GP ordered...

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