Australian Muscle Car Issue 84

My duties usually see me chained to the desk here at AMC HQ. So it made a nice change to break the shackles and hit the open road during production of this issue. Not once, but twice. Apart from a trip to Bathurst to shoot our cover car, I also gallivanted south from Sydney to the Riverina and Murray region. I’d been saving up stories with this common geographic denominator and ticked them off my ‘to do’ list over a few days. Ah, bliss... The entire outbound leg was via the Hume Freeway, with dual carriageway the full distance between Sydney and the Victorian border. First stop was Wodonga to interview long-time Holden dealer and short-term touring car driver Rod McRae. When you read about Rod’s great escape, starting page…

A Corvette engine in the Commodore will ensure the red lion roars – and roars loudly – until the end of Australian car production. The 6.2-litre LS3 engine is Holden’s final gift to the Australians who have supported the car since 1978 and the keystone to the recently unveiled VFII, which rolled out in showrooms in October. It’s also an admission by GM-Holden that the Commodore’s days as the archetypal Aussie family car are well in the past. As Aussie families continue the conversion to SUV haulers, buying them each month in record numbers, Holden has shifted the focus of the Commodore completely to performance fans. The VFII becomes, in effect, a four-door Camaro and sales of V8-powered cars are forecast to grow from the current one-third of deliveries to…

As if the LS3 in the VFII were not enough, Holden Special Vehicles is going all-out with its final tweak of the Commodore, by fitting all models with the supercharged LSA V8 previously reserved for the GTS. The GTS still retains its flagship status thanks to a slight de-tune for the Clubsport, Maloo and Senator, which have ‘only’ 400 kiloWatts and 671 Newton-metres. But those figures still mean a 60-kiloWatt boost from the Gen-F, as well as a staggering 101 extra Newton-metres. In addition to the power boost from the engine, HSV has upgraded the driveline with stronger gearbox, tailshaft, differential and axle components, as well as adding extra cooling for the transmission and engine. Visually, the Gen-F2 cars gain new-look 20-inch alloys, the bonnet vents from the VFII, a…

The execution date for the Falcon has now been set. The final homegrown Ford will roll off the end of the Broadmeadows assembly line in Melbourne on October 7. And it’s most likely to be an XR8. The date had been a very closely guarded secret, ever since Ford decided to shut its unprofitable Australian car making operations back in 2013, but was revealed on September 11 by the Geelong radio station, BayFM. It was tipped off by workers called to special meetings to hear details of the plant shut-down by Ford executives. Ford quickly confirmed the date, but said that although the majority of workers will lose their jobs at Broadmeadows and Geelong ahead of the shutdown, some will stay until the end of October to ensure cars are…

The man who put the sword through the Holden Commodore is now predicting the end of V8 engines. Stefan Jacoby, the head of international operations for General Motors, says that Holden buyers will have to accept new technology, such as the twin-turbo V6 that’s now being developed for a potential future in V8 Supercars racing after 2017. “These kind of traditional powertrains, I know they are very charming and very attractive – and I like the sound as well – but the times are honestly over,” Jacoby said in September at the Frankfurt motor show. “The world is obviously changing and the V8 period is coming to an end. And the rear-wheel drive is difficult to justify on a single dedicated architecture for Australia. “So there are many, many reasons…

Nearly half of Australia’s new Mustangs will be delivered as Fastback GT V8 automatics. As more than 3000 customers wait for delivery details, and the early adopters who confirmed in March are expecting their cars from November, Ford Australia has reported on the latest details. “All the Australian suspension tuning and testing has been completed and is incorporated into the cars. There are no hold-ups with production in the States so we are on track to deliver the cars in December,” says Ford spokesman, Neil McDonald. However, he confirmed that the controversial ‘burnout’ system in the car, which uses a line locker to the front wheels, will not be activated for Australia. “It was decided it is not appropriate with the current anti-hooning focus.” Other details are much as expected,…