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There’s something both special and somehow correct about a car on home turf. Whether it’s a Mustang rolling through Big Sur, an AMG bending the speedo needle on the autobahn at dawn or a Skyline GT-R on the Okutama Lake road, great cars excel on the roads they call home.
Today we’re doing nothing quite so iconic. Picking up a Holden VS Commodore in Melbourne’s northern suburbs doesn’t promise a seminal driving experience. I’m sitting on hilariously '90s upholstery that looks like airport terminal carpeting or a bad sleeve tattoo. And there’s so much plastic polish in here that I’m feeling like an oiled seabird.
I’m already looking forward to the moment I can hand it back to its generous owner.
I’ve also got to declare a bit of a cultural disconnect. While this car might bring you memories of pressing your nose to the glass of your local Holden dealer on your way to school, or devouring the purple prose in the car magazines of the day, in 1996, I’d never even set foot in Australia.
So the whole Ford versus Holden thing had passed me by. Yes, I’d driven a few of the SS models that were rebadged as Vauxhall VXR variants in the UK, and arrived here for the launch of the final VF version of the Commodore proper before it was replaced by an Insignia-based tribute act.
Yet within 100 metres in the VS, I’m hopelessly, inexorably hooked. I get it. Or at least an intoxicating part of ‘it’.
Turn the key and the starter motor labours lazily before catching and firing up the venerable ‘Iron Lion’ five-litre V8. It burbles cleanly, with a lovely cross-plane rumble that sounds like the prelude to so many movie car chases.
You know the scene: the good guy is chasing crooks through the back streets of the Tenderloin, the Bronx or somewhere equally gritty and/or atmospheric. He buttons out of the throttle, the music cuts and he’s criss-crossing the back alleys with just the high idle of his V8 as the backing before, BANG!, it all goes a bit Lalo Schiffrin when the villains come exploding sideways into shot and you’re off again.
We’ve all lived that cinematic experience many times over. Whether you’re from South Australia or South London, it’s an automotive lingua franca that we all understand. And that bass tone is the key. The bass is what makes the V8 slightly sinister, and lends it its charisma.
Drop into first gear, and you feel the torque reaction of the motor give the chassis a little shunt, just letting you know it’s there. The throttle is ridiculously urgent, seeming to give you a quarter of its output in the first inch of travel. It’s almost impossible not to leave a set of blurred elevens on any gravel parking lot or grassy shoulder. Naughtiness is fitted as standard.
Otherwise there’s an unhurried, almost languid feel to the suspension tune and the steering, almost as if to cancel out the eagerness of the throttle pedal. And the brakes are pretty woeful.
I maintain that brakes and lights are the two aspects of a modern car that have undergone a quiet revolution within the last 30 years. Everybody knows that drivetrains and interior electronics have progressed crazily in these past three decades, but brakes and lights? Along with tyres, they’ve helped transform vehicle safety.
It’s good to drive without much in the way of destination. That’s another thing that has gone out of fashion in recent years.
Our route, such as it is, meanders from Greenvale out to Wildwood. Beyond that, it’s a blank.
Melbourne expires abruptly as you head north. It’s not like the gradually thinning south-eastern growth corridor or the semi-industrial schlep down towards Geelong.
Pass beyond Tullamarine Airport and suburbia vanishes. I recall sitting next to somebody on an international flight into Tulla once who claimed that the bleak outlook appeared more like the Scottish Highlands than their notion of sun-kissed Australia.
It’s almost as if the urban fringe is cowed by the vast weight of country bearing down on it. Thousands of kilometres of red-earth desolation stretching due north: Wilcannia, Thargomindah, Longreach and a scruffy constellation of other one-horse dorps, yet to be sampled.
We’re just rumbling through these volcanic plains, past paddocks of basalt, desiccated poppy-heads and hobby-farm stock. On one section I ease onto the throttle and push towards the redline.
The engine note hardens and switches from its throaty burble to something more metallic, clearing its throat and giving its tenor. It’s a remarkably exotic-sounding thing by today’s standards.
There’s a misconception that this V8 was based on Chevrolet’s iconic small-block V8, possibly due to both engines having the same bore spacing, but the layout is otherwise quite different. The oil pump is driven from the front of the camshaft and the ignition distributor is driven from the rear, which would be utterly incomprehensible to any native Detroiter.
We stop for photos next to a culvert jammed with road-killed roos. Photographer Mat Riva seems not to notice a smell so heavy that you could cut a cube of it with a cricket stump. I pretend there’s somewhere more photogenic just along the road.
This Commodore is due on the Drive stand at the Melbourne Motor Show later this evening, but I can’t help but half-grin at its inability to get off the line without half the verge disappearing backwards in a roostertail.
Head north and the paddocks get large and the vanishing point stretches further into the heat haze. A stand of spindly stringybarks shimmers on the horizon.
We approach buildings. Bolinda? Pyalong? Who knows. The comfort blanket of sat nav has made us all uncomfortable not knowing where we are. Lean into it. It’s liberating.
The Commodore loafs along at barely 2000rpm, endearing in its boofiness. We’re in no hurry.
By today’s standards, the 168kW output from this Series II is laughable. It’s 2kW less than the current airport-transfer Toyota Camry. Back in 1996, though, the Commodore VS SS Series II was quite the hot ticket. The Commodore in general accounted for better than one in eight of all new cars sold in Australia that year, and the SS was the performance standard-bearer.
Priced at $40,800, it sat at the top of the Commodore range, but below the more white-collar Calais, Statesman, and Caprice models. Sink the slipper, and you’d hit 100km/h in a claimed 7.9 seconds. Maybe in the past 30 years, some of those ponies have escaped this particular corral.
No issue. When a cheap Chinese shopping SUV develops more power than a Ferrari F40, it’s clear that straight-line speed has become a particularly devalued commodity. I’m not disappointed that this Commodore doesn’t have the pace to turn your face concave.
I’m just enjoying the timbre of the indolent V8, the relaxed suspension tune and the delightful feel of old-fashioned hydraulic power steering. I don’t want to stop and – right at this moment – I wouldn’t want to be in anything else.
When offered the Commodore, I thought it would be an exercise in showing how far we’ve progressed. Without wishing to go too rose-tinted, it’s perhaps showing us what we’ve lost.
Engine character, steering feedback, suspension compliance and big glasshouses have all fallen victim in some way to some notion of progress. Of course, we’ve gained in many other ways, but not everything is better. I’m left wondering when ‘peak car’ might have been.
A storm is rolling in from the west. Crack the windows of the big Holden and you can feel the pressure drop in the air, and taste the tang of ozone. We’re keen to get the car headed towards the city before the heavens open.
The Commodore turns all of my pre-prepared narratives on their heads. The idea that we thought it was great back in the day, but it seems a bit quaint now. Maybe it feels more special today than it did in 1996, when it was widely considered to play second fiddle to the Ford Falcon EFII XR6.
Australians love a V8 but buy a six. Remember that one?
Anyway, we stop for a splash and dash and realise that just fat-arming around has seen the V8 drink at a rate of 15.1 litres per 100km. That’s an ouch at $2.40 a litre.
We arrive at Melbourne Convention Centre in the rain, manoeuvring the SS onto the show stand, where it sits next to our current Car of the Year, the Tesla Model Y. The contrast could hardly be more stark and would go on to sharply bifurcate the thousands of visitors to the stand.
Drive, too, has come a long way in the past 30 years to become the publishing success story it is today.
If anything, the publishing sector has been shaken even more violently than the automotive one in these past three decades. Some businesses transitioned online, but many died.
The accelerated pace of change was never more apparent than in the domestic automotive sector. Holden was a notable casualty, building its last car in Australia in October 2017, with the GM Australia Design Studio at Fishermans Bend finally shuttered in October 2020. That left a scar on Aussie car enthusiasts of all stripes.
The finger-pointing post-mortem was bitter and prolonged. Looking beyond the accusations, perhaps the truth was a lot simpler. Australia fell out of love with how wonderful and intoxicating its own cars felt on home turf, and the consequences were grave.
It’s not too late to rediscover that feeling. Crack open the Drive marketplace, dig out some classic Australiana and reward yourself. Make like an oiled seabird sitting on an airport terminal carpet, and you’ll never be happier. And if not, there’s still football, meat pies and kangaroos.
Andy brings almost 30 years automotive writing experience to his role at Drive. When he wasn’t showing people which way the Nürburgring went, he freelanced for outlets such as Car, Autocar, and The Times. After contributing to Top Gear Australia, Andy subsequently moved Down Under, serving as editor at MOTOR and Wheels. As Drive’s Road Test Editor, he’s at the heart of our vehicle testing, but also loves to spin a long-form yarn.
