Why I bought a V8 Holden ute

COMMENT
Each year since 1989 I’ve driven a hundred or so new vehicles… Some years more – many more… But none of them have excited me enough to buy one brand-new -- until now.

Yeah, I’ve always had a shed full of cars, bikes and other machinery, but my 2017 Holden Ute SS manual could well be both the first and last brand-new car I ever purchase.

Why? Because as a driver’s car it ticks all the boxes: two doors, two seats, big-bore V8, manual transmission, rear-wheel drive… It’s a real performance car that makes me feel good every time I fire it up.

Throw in a massive boot and an even bigger tow capacity and it can not only carry everything from dirtbikes to firewood, and from Ikea flat-packs to fridges, but it’s (almost) unique in the world as a passenger car-based pick-up.

All this for a total outlay of less than $45,000 on the road makes it the best bang for your bucks available in any automotive showroom today.

And if I wanted to, I could easily extract 500hp from its 6.2-litre LS3 V8 without pulling it apart, and still have change from $50K.

In less politically correct, socially responsible times I owned plenty of fast Fords and Holdens, but I’ve never called a V8 ute mine — and certainly not one that’s among the last vehicles ever to be built in Australia.

Of course, if you haven’t already ordered one you’re too late, because when GM shuts Holden’s factory doors tomorrow (October 20), it drops the axe on some of the world’s best-value sports sedans, wagons and utes ever produced. And the latter is the most iconic — yet best-kept secret — of them all.

But my SS Ute isn’t a speculative investment that will hide under covers waiting to appreciate, and nor is it a daily driver. It’s an unashamedly self-indulgent gift to myself that’s already done 5000km of grunt work, and when I’m gone, it will belong to my kids.

By then, perhaps, young ‘drivers’ will be chauffeured around in autonomous electric cars as their grandparents tell stories of Australia’s once-proud tradition of making unique, affordable performance cars.