CarBrandLogos archive · Holden · 1978

HoldenCommodore

An Opel body reworked for Australia, then forty years as the national default.

Photo: EurovisionNim · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Holden history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Holden Commodore, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

1978-1980 Holden VB Commodore 3.3 sedan 02

Origins

The Kingswood was large, thirsty and increasingly hard to justify after the oil shocks, so Holden did something previously unthinkable: it based its core family car on a European design. The VB Commodore of October 1978 took the Opel Rekord E body, blended in Senator front-end structure, and reworked the suspension and body for Australian roads, which required more strengthening than anyone at Opel had anticipated. It was smaller than the Falcon it faced, and better to drive than anything Holden had sold before.

1978-1980 Holden VB Commodore 3.3 sedan 02 · OSX · Public domain

1981-1984 Holden VH Commodore SLX station wagon 01

Design and engineering

Being smaller turned out to be the problem. Australian buyers, especially fleets and taxi operators, wanted interior width, and Ford exploited the gap for most of the 1980s. Holden's answer was the VN of 1988, which widened the body substantially and adopted a Buick-derived V6, moving the car up into the full-size class where it stayed for the next thirty years.

1981-1984 Holden VH Commodore SLX station wagon 01 · OSX · Public domain

1980-1981 Holden VC Commodore L station wagon 02

In production

From there it became the default Australian car: sedan, station wagon, and the coupé utility that no other market took seriously. Successive generations added more local engineering until the VE of 2006, built on the Zeta platform, was the first Commodore designed from scratch in Australia. That car was good enough to export as the Pontiac G8, the Chevrolet SS and the Vauxhall VXR8, and it gave HSV and the touring car championship their raw material.

1980-1981 Holden VC Commodore L station wagon 02 · OSX · Public domain

Legacy

The end came in two stages. Australian production stopped in October 2017 with the final VF, closing not just the model but domestic car manufacturing in the country. The badge continued for three more years on the ZB, a rebadged front-wheel-drive Opel Insignia imported from Germany, which sold poorly and was quietly dropped in 2020. The Commodore that mattered had already finished.

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Body

2-door coupé utility

Technical specification

The Commodore, in detail.

Production: October 1978 – October 2017 (Australia) ; February 2018 – December 2020 (Germany)
Class: Mid-size car (1978–1988; 2018–2020) ; Full-size car (1988–2017)
Body style: 2-door coupé utility ; 4-door sedan (automobile); sedan ; 5-door station wagon ; 4-door crew cab ; 2-door cab chassis
Layout: Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout; Front-engine, rear-wheel drive (1978–2017) ; Front-engine, front-wheel-drive layout; Front-engine, front-wheel drive (2018–2020) ; Front-engine, four-wheel-drive layout; Front-engin
Manufacturer: Holden

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