Revealed: Holden VF Commodore's NASCAR cousin

General Motors has provided the best indication yet of what Holden’s heavily upgraded VF Commodore will look like when it goes on sale next June by revealing the Chevrolet SS NASCAR in Las Vegas overnight.

New for 2013 rules will make all NASCARs look more like the production models on which they are supposed to be based, and in this case GM’s new NASCAR is designed to mimic North America’s upcoming Chevy SS – which will be exported from Australia and almost identical to the VF Commodore.

Chevrolet’s new SS-look NASCAR will hit the track at Daytona SpeedWeek next February, when GM will also stage the real-time reveal of the road-going Chevrolet SS and VF Commodore, which will be launched here in April.

The upgraded VF range – the first major redesign of Holden’s billion-dollar VE Commodore since 2006 - is expected to arrive in Australian dealerships in April, while the model year 2014 Chevrolet SS goes on sale in North America a few months later.

Chevrolet claims there are very, very clear similarities between NASCAR and the SS – and therefore the next Commodore, which will feature all-new front- and rear-end styling but the same roofline, window openings and doors.

“There are a few gifts from NASCAR,” said GM Chevrolet race designer Cameron Dempster. “The door coves, hood character lines, roof line and the wheel openings are standard design features that NASCAR has allowed us to retain from the SS.”

While the NASCAR’s stickers aim to mimic the SS/VF’s new-look front-end (indicating the VF will gain Malibu-style headlights and LED daytime running lights), GM says the strong bonnet lines characterise the SS as a high-performance rear-wheel drive sedan that deserves showroom space alongside Camaro and Corvette.

“This is a high-performance halo car for Chevrolet, not a vehicle we’ll produce for the mass market,” says Mark Reuss, President of GM North America.

Mr Reuss’ previous role as GM Holden Managing Director from 2008-2009 gives him a unique perspective into how easily the Holden VF was transformed into the SS, and how effectively the VF could become the next great halo car for Chevrolet.

Holden shipped more than 41,000 Commodores to the US between November 2007 and February 2009, when they were badged as the Pontiac G8, but that lucrative export deal ended when the Pontiac brand was axed as part of GM’s bankruptcy restructuring following the global financial crisis.

Mr Reuss said the G8 laid much of the left-hand drive engineering and regulatory groundwork for the Chevy SS (and the long-wheelbase Chevrolet Caprice police car that is still exported to the US from Adelaide in limited numbers), but indicated the increased value of the Australian dollar would make it less profitable per unit.

“I admit we were able to benefit from the work already done with the VE/Pontiac G8 program,” said Mr Reuss.

“(But) When we started the initial studies a few years ago to bring the Holden VF to North America as the Chevrolet SS, we did our costings with the Aussie/US dollar at parity, so this will not be an inexpensive car for us to build and import.

“The SS is a halo car for us, so we’re focusing for North America on class and refinement, quality and perceived quality with certain interior features.”

Of course, the VF/SS has been designed and developed by Holden and both cars will be built at Holden’s plant in Elizabeth. North America’s SS will be available only with a V8 whereas the Commodore will again be offered in V8 and V6 guises.

GM will not comment on expected sales volumes in either Australia or North America, but a fair guess is product volumes could reach beyond 50,000 per year. Officially, Chevrolet says it doesn’t know and is not making any estimates on sales volumes.

The SS will pack a big power punch from its aluminium V8 at launch, and GM confirms the SS and VF will eventually shift under-bonnet performance to the new direct-injection LT1 V8 that debuts very soon in 2013 Corvette.

In the new C7 Corvette, which enters production in September, the new 6.2-litre Gen 5 V8 is claimed to deliver fuel consumption of just 9.0L/100km and outputs of up to 335kW and 610Nm.

Just some of that would give the Chevy SS – and its Commodore namesake – a handy boost over the G8 and outgoing Commodore SS, which delivers 270kW/530Nm in manual form.

GM transformed the VF/SS to meet NASCAR’s template in two steps. It began with a 40 per cent scale model for wind tunnel testing and moved to a full-scale wind tunnel test model for final refinements.

Aerodynamically speaking, the design of the new VF/SS is very clean, claims Mr Dempster, who said there is a strong and obvious connection between race car and road car.

“We tried very hard to retain as many features of the road car as we could without affecting the aerodynamic packaging of the race car,” he said.

NASCAR and GM both see the enormous commercial value of Sunday race cars looking very similar to Monday showroom cars and Chevrolet hopes to drive sales with results on the track, so neither wants the VF/SS design to transform radically.

During early NASCAR testing at Martinsville, Homestead and Talladega, the new SS hit the track wearing camouflage to disguise its ‘standard’ design features.

More impactful to initial Chevrolet SS sales are the thousands of Pontiac G8 owners. These are red-blooded performance enthusiasts, claims Chevrolet. G8 resale values are high in the US and Chevrolet knows it is on a sure thing with the Australian-built and designed Holden VF.

It is simple hammer-and-nail marketing – hammer the competition on the race track then nail showroom sales with an honest and genuine high-performance sedan. On a performance-per-dollar basis, the Holden VF and Chevrolet SS will be unequalled in showroom appeal – a fact not lost on Mr Reuss.

“From day one when I moved back to the US from Australia, I wanted Chevrolet’s NASCAR program to be based on the Commodore. The Commodore was brought here to race.”

Chevrolet fans will no doubt be glad to see the historic homegrown American brand return to its rear-wheel-drive roots via the SS for the first time in 17 years, but nobody can deny it took a trip to Australia for Chev to find its heart beat.

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