Next Holden Commodore exposed

This is the car that's expected to form the basis of Holden's first imported front-wheel drive Commodore from 2018.

Rendered here by Automedia with Holden badges, next-generation Opel Insignia – also seen here in a fresh batch of spy shots and the first spy video – is expected to debut two years from now at the 2017 Frankfurt motor show, around the time Holden is due to cease local manufacturing and thereby end the life of the Australian developed and built Commodore.

While the name will continue on into a new generation, the next Commodore is expected to be based on General Motors’ front and all-wheel drive E2XX architecture, for which the Insignia is a core product.

And with Opel and Holden forming a close product alignment, the reasonable supposition is that a modified version of the Insignia will be the basis of the next Commodore.

Certainly, it was a proposition that Opel boss Karl Thomas Neumann acknowledged without confirming or denying last week at the Frankfurt show.

The message that Neumann clearly got out there was that a Holden Commodore based on the Insignia wouldn’t just be a case of replacing badges. There would be significant engineering change too.

"We give Holden the flexibility, we are not telling them 'keep it [an Opel model] like it is and put a badge on it'," Neumann said of Holden models developed from Opels. "We are supporting them and working with them. "And we did this with past launches in Australia to make this a car which becomes a Holden car and I think this is really important and I think it is important for Opel too that we are allowed to use group technologies."

Seen for the second time now, the photographed car with its swooping roofline inspired by 2013’s Opel Monza concept looks very much like a five-door hatch, which would be something new for the Commodore badge.

A station wagon is also expected, but whether a sedan – the traditional Commodore staple – is also to be produced is unknown.

What’s becoming more apparent about the next Insignia – or at least the version we are seeing being tested – is that it will be a longer car than its predecessor.

Automedia, the source of these spy pics, estimates it will be up to 100mm longer than the existing Insignia, which accompanies the test car in some of these photos.

Just to put that in perspective, boosting the current Insignia by 100mm would give it an overall length of 4903mm, just 44mm shorter than the facelifted VF II Commodore about to be released.

So the great news for those of us who have bought Commodores based on interior space is that its replacement is likely to be even roomier, given that front-wheel drive cars have an inherent packaging advantage over rear-drive cars.

But of course FWDs also deliver an entirely different driving experience. The new Commodore will feature a four-cylinder engine but will continue with a V6 and top out with a twin-turbo V6 and all-wheel drive in performance models.

Intriguingly, Cadillac has just revealed a new family of V6 engines including a 3.6-litre 300kW V6. Effectively the fourth evolution of 2004’s High Feature V6, only time will tell if they – or something similar -- have been pencilled in for Commodore.

Whether Holden will take diesel as well as petrol engines is at this time also unknown.

But we do know there won’t be a V8 version -- something GM international operations boss Stefan Jacoby confirmed at Frankfurt last week.

With an eight-speed auto expected to be standard, improved fuel efficiency will be one of the by-products of the shift to the new-generation Insignia, which is also expected to be up to 200kg lighter than its predecessor and may also be available as a hybrid at some point.

Automedia is also speculating the interior will include a digital dashboard of the type previewed by the Monza.

One thing we do know for sure about the next Insignia is that it has been styled under the direction of Australian Niels Loeb, who is Opel’s exterior design director. He has previously acknowledged the input Richard Ferlazzo and the Holden design team in Australia have had into look of the next Insignia.

Image: Rendering Automedia