Next-gen Commodore capable of drifting

Holden’s new German-built Commodore will still uphold a proud Australian tradition in driving, engineers have confirmed: it will be capable of holding lurid drifts.

While there is no rear-wheel drive Commodore to speak of – something that has been present on every Commodore since 1978 – the man behind the imported model’s new all-wheel drive system believes it will still appease those with a penchant for going sideways.

Speaking at the exclusive prototype drive of the Commodore this week, General Motors Europe engineer Andreas Liljekvist said extensive testing showed a double-pronged benefit in having all-wheel drive.

“It depends on what you want to do: if you want the car to oversteer then of course, it will oversteer. But if someone wants the safety factor, it’s there too. The car adapts to the driver,” said Liljekvist, whose role in development covered all-wheel drive and chassis control systems.

“It’s the best of both worlds.”

Holden has confirmed range-topping V6 versions of the Commodore will be fitted with the all-wheel drive system – similar to that used on the Ford Focus RS – while lower-spec four-cylinder petrol and four-cylinder diesel derivatives will send drive through the front wheels only. Unfortunately there is no rumoured V6 twin-turbo or V8 option in the pipeline – at least for now.

The four-wheel drive system is fully adaptive, capable of monitoring and adjusting torque to each wheel up to 100 times a second. The system is capable of sending a maximum 50 per cent of torque to the rear wheels at any one time with an ability to lock the rear. It will also be fitted with a sport mode that General Motors and Holden engineers have confirmed will loosen the reins of the stability control system.

“Opel and Holden went from the beginning with the same setting, and then [Holden engineer] Rob (Trubiani) wanted more from the system,” Liljekvist said.

“In Europe the car is more aggressive in Sport mode, but it will also oversteer in the regular driving mode. It depends what you want.

“It will give you a lot of fun, and you’ll notice this on the dirt and the asphalt as well.”

This week, motoring.com.au rode shotgun with Trubiani as he tore around Holden’s dirt ride and handling track at speeds of over 150km/h. Even in the early stages of testing, it is possible for the car to oversteer, but only when heavily provoked by the driver.

“At the moment the system is still making big sharp interventions and at times it’s working almost the opposite way you want it to work,” Trubiani explained.

“We’re going to be doing a few big updates this week that will improve that significantly. What’s evident already is that the system is very rarely front-drive only, it’s almost always shuffling torque to the rear wheels.”

While Holden’s Australian all-wheel drive system is under development, Liljekvist confirmed General Motors engineers had now signed off on the European program.

Liljekvist was responsible for evaluating the six-cylinder car on the Nurburgring – Germany’s fabled race track. While he wouldn’t be drawn on whether the car is faster than the previous SS-V Ute, which set an 8 minute 19 second lap around the Nordschleife circuit in 2013 at the hands of Trubiani, he insisted was rewarding at the limit.

“The Opel program is half a year ahead, we did our final testing some weeks ago for the first model year,” Liljekvist said.

“The Holden program is some months later. We have driven a lot of the six-cylinder cars, we worked in parallel with Holden.

“I don’t speak so much about time because to set a final lap is good but Nurburgring is also a test track where you can’t drive like that. It has long sweeping corners and it’s a good place to test what happens when you deliberately do something in the car

“Of course we do some fast laps to check times but I don’t think it’s official yet. We log our testing and we have GPS timing, so we have an idea.”

All you need to know about the MY18 Commodore
MY18 Commodore – Our first prototype drive
MY18 Commodore – a detailed rundown
MY18 Commodore – why it promises to succeed
MY18 Commodore – is Australia ready for an imported ‘icon’?
MY18 Commodore –