Walkinshaw Performance W547 2016 Review

Walkinshaw Performance Products W547
Road Test

Slot into the welcoming leather bucket seat, hit the starter button on Walkinshaw's hottest-ever Holden Commodore SS V, the heavily modified W547, and the Chevrolet-sourced LS3 V8 roars into life.

Displacing 6.2 litres, you can almost feel each individual piston reaching its zenith then dropping again through the seat of your pants. But it's not rough or lumpy. Indeed, there's a level of refinement about this vehicle that raised a few eyebrows, including those of yours truly.

Trundling out of the motoring.com.au underground garage for the first time, indicating left to turn onto one of Melbourne's busiest roads, a gap is spotted in the traffic and roughly one-third throttle is applied. Rookie mistake…  The big 'Walkie' steps sideways languidly as car lines up with road – all very progressive mind you – and it's at this point the car's ludicrous power becomes truly apparent.

Later, on a much quieter road out in the country, the big V8 hesitates slightly to a throttle input, the six-speed auto gearbox and engine control unit seemingly convening over what to do next. Then it starts huffing in air, hard and loud, before the supercharger pierces the air with its shrill whine and it's on like Donkey Kong.

It really is as though the car takes a breath, then bang! It’s showtime. It's likely a manual gearbox would add more control, but in some ways the delay adds further character to the V8 brute.

Driving, nay, 'attempting' to drive the Walkinshaw W547 at full throttle is akin to washing a cat. You'll probably end up with a few wounds and a new appreciation of the importance of slow, subtle movements.

Oh, and if you do buy one of these, you'll want to save your local tyre shop into your favourites list.

Squashing the accelerator pedal flat unleashes a thermonuclear torrent of torque that the car's rear treads have difficultly containing, to put it mildly. Thanks to the integration of an Eaton ‘twin vortices’ supercharger, an intercooler, plus an injection-moulded cold air intake and larger high-flow fuel injectors (to name a few), power rises from an imposing 304kW in Holden factory trim to an ungodly 547kW at 6500rpm.

The reality is that you'll rarely need to spin the 16-valve V8 engine beyond 5000rpm; with peak torque of 880Nm at 4000rpm it's got a mid-range hit that would make Tyson Fury blanche.

Featuring plenty of new internals – camshaft, valve springs, you name it – and an active cat-back exhaust, the Walkinshaw W547 is not for the faint of heart. Only after some careful experimentation can a wide open throttle be achieved but even then – at higher speeds and gears – the rear tyres can still snap like a rabid dog, fighting for control.

Walkinshaw reckons the car will hit 100km/h from rest in 4.0sec and although we couldn't achieve that time with the six-speed automatic, we managed mid-fours... That's Ferrari fast.

But for all its ferocity and lunacy at full noise, the Walkinshaw W547 is more than just a weekend warrior.

Commuting with the car for a week and undertaking an incredibly boring 220km highway journey reveals its Commodore DNA is very much intact. It's just a question of whether the driver has the willpower to leave cruise control on!

It's a rather docile vehicle at (very) small throttle openings and although it's not fuel efficient (my best instant reading was 10.4L/100km, but average was significantly higher) it's a good cruiser. Driving between Melbourne and Torquay, a 70 minute journey almost exclusively on 100km/h highways, the Walkie doesn't generate the sort of volume or resonance that becomes annoying or monotonous.

The suspension feels somewhat firm over bitumen cut outs and lumpy, crumbling roads at slow speeds but the W547 is a fun toy on entertaining roads. Sure, you need to be delicate with the loud pedal when exiting corners but it holds a neat and tidy line and the upgraded AP brake kit ($5950) does a much better job of slowing the circa-1800kg machine than the Holden's factory anchors.

Punching out of corners can still be a fast and involving exercise, particularly if you slot it into fifth gear and ride the wave of torque to maximise traction.

Like all Commodores it's a big, roomy, comfortable car for five passengers and you can cram plenty of junk in the boot too, which for many owners will be a boon.

Likely to be one of the last, and certainly one of the most powerful Walkinshaw Performance Packages ever developed; you can snaffle one of these mad power mongers for $25,990 over the purchase price of the vehicle – anything with an LS3 V8 will suffice.

That means a brand new $40,990 Holden Ute SS (manual) could be pumping out 547kW for around $66,980. In bang for your bucks terms it’s off the scale, and considering Walkinshaw will honour the driveline for the life of the new car warranty it shows confidence in the engineering and build.

I do wonder what 547kW is going to do in the long-term to the drive-shaft and diff however – which are left stock standard, without the heavy-duty hardware of the HSV GTS. If it was me I'd be looking to upgrade these components post-haste, just to be on the safe side.

Apart from the obnoxious colour scheme, that looks almost like a police highway patrol car (which has its benefits at times!), there's not a great deal that irks me about this car.

The W547 is more refined than I was expecting and although you could easily spend $90,000 on one of these beasts there are not many rivals that could keep up in a straight line.

I'm not much of a philosopher and the jury's still out on what the meaning of life is, but what I can tell you is that driving the Walkinshaw W547 is an unforgettable experience, one that leaves you buzzing with energy.

Perhaps the more pertinent question when considering a car such as this is how much self-control do you have? Because the most powerful car to ever roll into the top-secret, high-security, world-famous motoring.com.au underground garage is not from Germany or Italy or even the USA. It's from Australia, and it's called the Walkinshaw Performance W547.

2016 Walkinshaw Performance Products W547 pricing and specifications:
Price: $88,630 (plus on-road costs [donor car + $25,990 supplied and fitted])
Engine: 6.2-litre eight-cylinder supercharged-petrol
Output: 547kW/880Nm
Transmission: Six-speed automatic
Fuel: 19.4L/100km (as tested)
CO2: NA
Safety Rating: Five-star ANCAP

Also consider:
>> HSV GTS (from $94,490 plus ORCs)
>> Ford Falcon XR8 (from $53,490 plus ORCs)
>> Mercedes-AMG E 63 S  (from $250,540 plus ORCs)

Now read the latest Walkinshaw 407 review