In the premiere episode of Torquing Cars, hosts Stephen Ottley and Scott Newman dive into Holden’s legacy, a brand central to Australia’s automotive history.

They kick things off with a look at Australia's ute market before unveiling their Top 5 Holden cars, mixing personal stories with insights into the vehicles that shaped Australian motoring.

It’s the perfect blend of news, nostalgia, and banter, setting the tone for what’s to come!

Torquing Cars - A torquecafe.com podcast

Foreign.

Hello and welcome to the very first episode of Talking Cars.

I'm Steve Otley, editor at large of torquecafe.com and I'm joined by my longtime friend and fellow longtime motoring journalist, Scott Newman.

Hey Scott.

G', day, Steve.

So if you've picked up any car magazine in in the last in Australia in the last, say, 15 years, chances are Scott's stories will have been in front of you.

He has been writing about cars and shredding tires for the likes of Wheels, Motor, unique Cars and car sales for years and has a well deserved reputation as one of Australia's most astute performance car road testers.

So.

And he's also a passionate petrol head like me.

But hopefully we won't agree all the time because that will make a for a pretty boring podcast.

Anyway, thanks for joining me Scott.

Glad to have you along for the ride.

No worries.

It is a pleasure to be here.

Excellent.

Okay, now there are no shortages of podcasts on the in the world today, so you shouldn't really need an explanation on how it works.

But here's the plan for this specific podcast.

Frankly, Scott and I just love talking about cars.

So the plan each week is we're going to pick a topic and we're going to pick our top five and we're going to go through our personal top five lists and we're going to count down from five to one and hopefully discuss the merit of each other's different choices.

Like I say, it's going to be pretty boring if we just keep picking the same cars, but I'm sure that will happen from time to time.

But before we do that, let's talk about what's making news on torquecafe.com and I guess the question for this week, Scott, is have we reached peak ute?

I've just gotten back from driving the new MGU 9.

So far this year we've had some other big name arrivals like the LDV Terran 9, the Kia Tasman of course, and the BYD Shark 6.

So do we have too many utes?

I think we're getting close to market saturation because we've got all these new players for so many years.

It was, it was Navarro, it was Triton, it was Hilux, it was Ranger, you know, a couple around the fringes, maybe lower there.

But now, you know, maybe five years ago we got the next influx with the like of GWM and LDV and now suddenly the floodgates have opened with the MG U9 and the Kia Tasman and more are coming, new photons coming back, stuff like that.

So, but I think we are seeing, I think in terms of overall peak capacity, peak volume, we're probably at peak ute.

I don't think we're going to see maybe another 10, 20% increase in ute sales, especially with NVAs coming in.

But I think we're also splitting the segment which I'll get your input on, because you've driven some of the newer ones between this lifestyle ute versus your tradie ute.

So you've got your sort of MGU 9s and your BYD sharks and then you've got your Hiluxes and your Rangers, stuff like that.

So we'll be seeing a bit more fragmentation.

Yeah, certainly it's interesting.

I mean even going back to the start of this year, Sean Hanley from Toyota, he's really been setting that foundation for Hilux and potentially Ranger to get overtaken by the likes of like say Toyota RAV4.

As, as we see more people just, you know, again keep flocking to SUVs.

But you're right, the market has fragmented and we've gotten to this point where I think, you know, if you look, if you look at the sales, Ranger and Hilux are now so far ahead of everything else, they're kind of in a league of their own.

They are the, the default tradies choice.

But also there is an increasing amount of them that are becoming, yeah, like you said, lifestyle utes.

You know, the, you know, MG makes no secret, you know, that's got a, a multi link rear end, it's got, you know, stitched leaf springs.

It's sacrificed a bit of payload to be a bit more, I guess, SUV like, I mean the Tasman for all of its payload capabilities and all those, you know, they have really tried to make it a working ute.

It looks like an SUV inside.

We are seeing this transition away from, yeah, the Utes as we've known them to something far more livable and practical on a day to day basis rather than necessarily practical for the work site.

So it's gonna be interesting to watch and see how it goes.

Absolutely.

The other thing will be how the powertrains evolve as you know, will diesel continue to Domina?

Will it, will the things like the Shark take over?

Because I've been surprised like even after the tax Advantages ended for PHEVs, shark sales are still continued, which I think most people thought they'd fall off.

So it's going to be a very interesting time in next three or five years to see how that evolves.

Yeah, for sure.

Like you say with nvs, the, the vehicle efficiency standard, it's going to be interesting to see like I think to be blunt looking at the sales, I think for the Ford Ranger Phev has been had a slow start.

It'll be interesting to see how that goes up.

And by no means I think it's too early to say it's not worked.

It's just, it's obviously got off to a much slower start than say the shark has.

But certainly I think it's going to be interesting to watch plug in hybrids because I think it's pretty transparent if you look at say like the US market and you see how the electric, you know a Ford F150 and Chevrolet Silverado have frankly not performed and even you know the cyber truck Tesla cybertruck has been a flop.

People do not want electric utes so you know there's a, there's going to be a change in some way, in some ways forced upon the, the market by the, by government but consumers are still going to want to buy their, their big utes and so there's going to have to be some sort of compromise somewhere along the way.

But anyway, yeah, it's interesting, it's interesting times.

Now you can read my MGU9 review on torquecafe.com and get all the latest news and reviews there.

But moving on to the main event, our topic for this week, our top five topic is we've gone with a classic Australian theme for our very first episode.

The top five best Holdens.

Now this like obviously this is a highly emotive and a very broad subject.

So the brief I gave to Scott and myself was, was pretty simple.

Imagine that the World Institute of Cars which is obviously a completely made up thing we should start.

Yeah, potentially, yeah.

Maybe if we can just need a building and you know like I think it's maybe let me maybe just let's copyright that name before we go too far.

But yeah, pretty simple.

Imagine that they are hosting an exhibition on Holden.

What are the five cars we would send to represent the brand?

So this is strictly Holden's and you know, so we're skipping HSVs and HDTs and those sorts of things.

So hopefully that's a list for another day.

But yeah, so the five Holdens that really define the brand.

So Scott, kick us off, what is your number five?

Okay so just a quick, quick note on how I approach this.

I wanted to have my five car museum exit exhibit and I wanted to have a broad church that sort of Covered everything Holden did, the whole history of Holden.

So I've got a variety of variants and eras.

So I was kicking it off with the HQ1 tunnel because, okay, you got to have a ute in there.

It's so quintessentially Australian.

Even though obviously Ford kind of started the whole pickup ute thing.

You got to have a Holden Ute in there.

The HQ was still, obviously later they became sort of sports utes.

They were still usable but they didn't have the capacity in terms of payload.

Whereas an hq, as the name suggests, it was a one tonner, you could carry a heap of stuff on it.

And the HQ was the biggest selling Australian car of all time.

You know, that HQ range went all the way from like a Ute all the way to a Premier to a Statesman to a Monaro.

So that represents the hq, which I think is a very important part of the Holden's history.

And it represents the ute.

Yeah, it's a great choice.

I mean it's.

When I started, you know, going to car races, the, you know, the HQ series was a staple, you know, because there was, I guess there was just so many of them around.

It was, they were, they were a cheap, easy car.

You know, it's Effectively the Toyota 86 series of the 80s and 90s was racing HQs.

That series thinned the ranks pretty quickly though.

There was a fair bit of panel damage.

All right, what do you got?

My number five, similar kind of vein.

I went with the Sandman, you know, that classic 70s.

If, if we're talking about Holden and its cultural impact, obviously not the huge volume that they say HQ did, but the cultural impact that I think Sandman had on Australia.

You know, it was very much of the time, you know, it came out in the 70s.

You know, you look at even the official press photos back in the day even had, you know, what appear to be naked people at the back of it.

So there was, there was really no, there was no sort of questioning what, what the car's purpose was.

You know, that would have been an interesting press launch.

Yeah, probably back in the day they probably were a bit different now.

Yeah, but you know, like.

Yeah, I mean this obviously, obviously, you know, you, the panel van was just a, was just a, you know.

Yeah, like I say, it's become sort of part of the Australian automotive DNA.

And so you see it, you know, they brought it back later on as a, you know, in tribute and even Even Triple eight built the Sandman supercar, which was sort of just again, it sort of shows you how, you know, what a lasting impact Sandman had, even though it was really only around for a brief time.

Yeah, I mean that was a, that's a great pick and one I didn't even think of.

That's the beauty of this, these lists.

So.

And again, and given the, given the volumes, definitely an oversized cultural impact.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, number four, what do you got?

Okay, number four, I've got the VN Calais.

All right, so.

And I'm gonna, I'm gonna give a shout out to the vn.

I think I thought about putting a VT here because the VT was extremely popular, but the VN often gets overshadowed.

People I think concentrate on the VB being the first Commodore going down a size or the VT because it was spectacularly popular and just demolished the au.

But the VN I include for a few reasons.

One, it was much more successful than VB to vl, like a VL Calais might have been.

It probably was a better car than a VN Calais to be honest.

Lovely RV30, but you're kind of a Japanese engine in a car that's representing Australia on the world stage.

So the vn, after years of being beaten, overtook the Falcon to become Australia's best selling car.

So that was a massive thing because for years, while private buyers loved the VB to vl, fleets didn't.

So they needed to go to a bigger car.

It felt and it sort of set the template I think for the next.

Well until the Commodore ended really of having a GM engine, it came with GM support.

It was a.

Had great performance because it was really, really light and had this new 3.8 litre V6 in it that gave it heaps of grunt.

It was the fastest sort of base Commodore for a while.

So while the vn, why you wouldn't maybe put it as one of the best Holden's because it had its flaws still, narrow tracked and stuff like that.

I think it was a very important car for turning Holden's fortunes around and making it successful because Holden had just been bailed out by gm so it was really on the rope.

So it really needed something to work and it did.

It created this car with not much money, but it hit the nail on the head, overtook the Falcon and I've chosen the Calais because the VN also introduced the first Commodore Ute and the first sort of Commodore based fancy cars, you know, Statesman and Caprice.

So that's why it gets my number Four.

Okay.

No, I love it.

I think it's a great choice.

Like, it's, it's easy to overlook.

Yeah.

Just how successful those cars were.

You know, they were the default choice for, you know, we now live in this era of SUVs and Utes, like we're talking about.

But you know, for decades, you know, when we were growing up, that was, that was the default choice for families.

And so that, you know, the VN certainly played a huge role in my adoles, you know, childhood and adolescence, you know, growing up.

They were just everywhere.

They were ubiquitous.

So.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, it's like I went a little bit different from my number four.

I went back to the beginning, the 48, 215 FX.

You know, this, it's, it's, it, you know, there is no holding without it.

Right.

It was the beginning.

Obviously it had a fair degree of, you know, Chevrolet input because it was a GM product, but it became quintessentially Australian.

You know, it was, you know, by, you know, rolled out in 48.

By 51, they'd done a, um, version of it.

So that generation, I think, set, you know, laid the foundations for Holden, you know, for the next, you know, 50 odd years.

It, it sort of said, look, this is a car that's built, you know, for Australian conditions.

It's going to be built in Australia.

And I think, you know, we overlook, obviously probably not Holden's finest car in the, in the grand scheme of things.

And, you know, not.

That's not as big a seller or any of that sort of stuff.

But I think without it, it's, it's hard to tell the story of Holden.

100%.

Yep.

Very, very important car.

Yeah.

48 or 215.

And then it was originally called the Holden, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's in some ways a little bit.

It's, it's, it's the Australian version of the LaFerrari.

You know, it's.

That's right.

Yeah.

It's just the Holden, so.

Which is sort of an appropriate name for it because it really is, like I say, you know, without it, it's hard to imagine the, you know, without it being a city.

I mean, imagine if it was a flop.

You know, people, people have been trying to build cars in Australia for a long time and you know, you know, if it had been a terrible thing, then customers just wouldn't have bought it and we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation because there'd only be one Holden.

To talk about.

That's right.

I think a lot of people forget that Australia built cars for a long time and Holden built cars for a long time.

Obviously other manufacturers like CKD kits, what are they?

Complete knockdown kits.

So there was a long history of car building in Australia but not that sort of start to finish manufacturing thing.

It was truly an Australian car.

Yeah.

And look, slight personal detour here.

And yes it was largely I think Chevrolet again, Chevrolet parts.

But you know, they tried to build it in Sydney but it became apparent, you know, relatively quickly it's cheaper to import them and unfortunately we sort of, we've, we've come back to that now as a country but.

And that's a much longer conversation for another day.

So yeah, I think it's, you know, deserves its place in Holden immortality.

So anyway, what, what about you?

What's number three on your list?

So first step on the podium for me is the HT Monaro GDS350.

Okay.

The Monaro, you know, you've got to have a Monaro in there I think.

And I picked that one because it got, it's still got the Bathurst, still got the Bathurst heritage.

At one Bathurst, which is the HG didn't was apparently I haven't driven one, but apparently the HD is a bit nicer to drive than the HK, the original 327.

If you look at a Holden showroom from 67 to 68, like in 67 you had an HR, the HR series, right?

Boxy, kind of small, pretty weedy six.

And then in the space of 12 months suddenly you had this amazing looking two door V8.

Power went to Bathurst, won Bathurst.

It was such an important car.

And you mentioned about the Sandman typifying that era.

And I think that Monaro does that with the sort of the swinging 60s.

It's amazing back then, but yeah, that's why the Monaro has to be.

So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, for reasons that will become obvious soon, I do certainly agree with you on a lot of those points.

No, I think it's, it's interesting.

I have got it on my list.

I got the HK on my list at number two.

Yep.

So, you know, I guess we can talk about that now.

The, the reality is.

Yeah, look, I, I went with HK because it was the first.

But I, you know, I agree with all those points.

You say like the, the reality is, you know, as much as say the, you know, the 48, 215 kind of set the agenda as, and established this business.

You know, the Monaro was really that car and obviously there was a lot of, you know, the sedan was the, again like we're talking about.

It was a popular family choice at the time.

The Monaro wasn't the sensible choice per se.

You know, it was, it was showing that Holden was going to push the limits.

It was going to be a stylish, you know, desirable brand.

And so, you know, by doing that and doing it with, with yeah, all those original Monaros, it kind of, yes, it's, it set a tone and in, in, in many ways established the Australian car culture.

Yeah, I mean it was the, I guess it was the first Aussie halo car really.

Like again, you say you might have wanted a Monaro 327 but you'd go and get a what like a Belmont or something like, you know, affordable.

But it took you to a Holden showroom.

And obviously the other reason that car's so raising that car's so important is that it took Ford, what, four years to get an XA Coupe together and Valiant about the same.

So they were really leading the charge in terms of that V8 muscle car coupe thing.

Yeah, like the V8 muscle car as we know it kind of is spawn of this generation.

You know, these HK Monaro, you know, obviously the winning Bathurst kind of helps set that, you know, set that legendary status.

And so, yeah, it really did.

You know, that's why I had it at number two is because I Think it really defined Australian car culture for decades.

I mean we still look at it, we still love V8s, right?

Like you and I, if they said, oh, we're going to bring, you know, going to have a Holden V8 tomorrow, we'd love it.

You know, like it's just, it's just a part of our ingrained DNA.

As, as fans of it, like, like to be honest, I didn't grow up in a Ford or a Holden household, you know, like that like so many people did.

I, for whatever reason my dad had Mitsubishis with the other Australian made car, the Magna, but it was still part of it.

Right.

Like it was still, it was still one of those things where, you know, the, the V8 Holden was a special car.

You know, by the time we were kids.

Yeah, the Monara wasn't around until it, until it made its sort of short lived comeback.

But you know, the fact of the matter was it, yeah, it set the tone for the next, you know, for decades.

And not even decades.

I mean it's like I say, still now, you know, we see how much Australian consumers love V8, so.

And I think a lot of it comes from that.

So.

Yeah, it's hard to imagine Holden without a Monaro.

That's, that's for damn sure.

Even though they didn't have one for decades.

You know, it's interesting, it's fascinating to see when, when they brought back the, the coupe concept.

And I still remember seeing that at the, was it 98 Sydney Motor Show.

And it was, I mean it was, it was just stunning.

Like it was just amazing and like stunning in the sense that it was a, you know, visually a fantastic looking car.

But also the fact that like here's Holden just pulling out all the stops and making something really special.

Yeah, the impact, the size of the cultural impact the original car had was verified by the reaction when they brought it back.

Yeah, like it was the hottest thing around.

Like you could drive a Lambo or a Ferrari down the street and no one would care because they were looking at a Monaro.

So.

And I was part of that.

Like when you saw it, all those beautiful colors.

So.

But what was your number three?

Because you've got to do number three.

Okay, I gotta, we have, we'll backtrack slightly to number three and look, it's hard to narrow it down to a specific model, but in a similar vein to the Monaro, I would love to, you know, I've got to pick a Tirana.

You know.

You know, if you're talking the ultimate Tirana to me, Obviously it's the A9X that was, you know, truly an iconic car.

It said so much about that kind of as much as sort of the Commodore and that, you know, the HQ were the, the family cars of the 70s and 80s and then Commodore obviously into the 90s.

You know, the Toronto I think was you know, the hero model of the, of the 70s in so many respects.

You know, you know it was, it was the race car is winning Bathurst with Brock and that sort of stuff.

But you know, even going back, you know, going back to the, you know again going back originally to brock in the 72 with the XU1 like a six cylinder car, demonstrated handling.

In some ways it was the car that showed hey Australia, we need to, you know, V8s are great but we also need to do handling, you know.

And so, and that, you know, then we saw that, you know, roll on into the future.

That's what we ended.

You know, we ultimately ended up with these fantastic handling V8s and so you got the best of both worlds.

But I think it's again hard to imagine Holden without the Tirana.

You know, it's a shame it sort of disappeared when it did and it would have been great to have seen it come back.

And maybe in some ways that was what hold was missing towards the end was sort of a small car that you know, was affordable and could appeal to people.

You know, we saw them try and bring it back with, with TT36 as a concept and that sort of thing.

But you know, again partly sort of ingrained in our culture but you know like.

Yeah, it's just again hard to, hard to think of Holden without thinking of Tirana.

Yeah, there's no argument there.

I mean it's another iconic brand and it's, it is interesting though that the Torana nameplate is so different because it's, it's on the LC and the lj which are quite different cars from the, you know, lh LX and even the uc.

So it does span quite a broad remit.

But I mean a 9x is just so cool and if there was just so easily modified as well, you know the road car wasn't anything necessarily special but it was a pure homologation special.

It was their just to molecule the car to go racing and you gotta love it for that.

Yeah, I mean that's sort of the part of that cool thing about that here and it's I guess part of it why you know, I chose it is you know, like I say, there's plenty of tiranas and in some ways the bread and butter tiranas like you say they, they were probably just as important in the grand scheme of things for Holden.

But you know there is just something about the A9X as yeah, it's just the, like I say, the definitive tirana.

If you say close your eyes, think of a Tirana, that's the one that's going to come to my head straight away.

So yeah, that's a story.

Actually I've got a quick story as a. I did a feature many, many, many years ago with unique cars and the Bowden's brought along some of their cars and who was it?

I can't remember which one, which one of the Bell might have been Chris.

He gave me a ride around Lakeside in the car.

In the 78 HDT car.

I was just sitting on the floor because I only have one seat.

He wasn't going that fast or anything like that.

But yeah, we had to get back to the pit so I just jumped in it and sat on the floor.

And just to be in that car is just super, super cool.

Yeah, well, not jealous at all.

That's.

No, it's fine.

Sounds terrible.

Okay, well that's my number three.

What about your number two?

Number two drum roll is the.

I've gone very specific here.

Holden VF2 Motorsport Edition.

Okay.

A car I never get to drive sadly.

But I drove.

I mean I drove heaps of red lines and stuff like that but I picked this car for quite a few reasons.

VA was super important.

Like that was Holden showing off.

Probably Holden at its most powerful.

Biggest budget it had a big export program that didn't work because of gfc.

We all sort of.

Most people know the story but the reason I picked the EVF is because a it showed Holden improved until the very end.

Like there was no reason for that car to come out at the very end with the involvement.

If you didn't know.

The Motorsport edition basically took an SS redline which is already a really, really good package.

Gave the adaptive dampers, the magnetic ride control from the HSVS or the US Pontiac's sorry Chevy SS got extra cooling on it, got extra chassis development and only came out like 12 months before the end.

It was limited run program so that didn't really sort of make sense but it showed that the Engineers and the people behind Holden wanted to keep going and make the very best product until the very, very end.

In terms of that locally grown product, it showed that it was the best Commodore ever.

It was just the best Commodore ever.

I remember like VSS came out, great car, great touring car, great handling car for its time.

Then the Redline package came out, extra performance again and they just kept getting better and better and better until we got to that VF2 redline.

That sort of sounded awesome with the.

When it got the LS3 and then.

Yeah.

The Motorsport edition and obviously they brought back.

We talk about famous names coming back.

They brought back the director and what was the UTE called?

Magnum.

Yeah, that's right.

So but I mean the director was an interesting choice.

Yeah, the director, like that was a really interesting.

I don't know if that's.

I mean it's very self referential.

It's very, in some ways, you know, I don't know if it was too soon.

Yeah.

You know, for a lot of people, like, I mean it is.

I don't know if that was them having fun with it or what.

But certainly as name choices go for a Holden that is, that was just kind of the most outrageous given everything that happened with Brock and the, and the director back in the, in the 80s.

I think it was, it was such a strange choice.

Yeah, it was a very weird, it was a very weird era to bring back given like we talked about Sandman and Monaro, the joy of those name plates.

Yeah.

It's like bringing back, you know, the worst part of your life to us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

To celebrate.

Yeah, yeah.

Like no one wants to, you know.

Yeah.

Like relive the hardest memories typically.

Right.

There are certain names you wouldn't name your children.

Yeah.

Guess what?

They are.

Yeah.

And like.

Yeah, but and also it didn't have a polarizer in it so it wasn't really a true director.

So I mean, like what a cop out.

Exactly.

I reckon so.

I reckon, you know, we've got a couple of classics in there.

So.

And those last Holdens were so good.

They were such great cars that I think one of those needs to be there.

So yeah, I'm sticking a VT to Motorsport Edition in my exhibit.

Okay.

Okay.

Now we just got to deal with your number one.

What's funny you should say that because obviously we've skipped over.

Well, we've touched on my number two already but so conveniently.

And we haven't set this up, folks.

My number one is the Holden Commodore vfx The final Commodore because I did, like you said, SSV Redline.

Fantastic car.

You know, like, I mean genuinely, it was a world class car.

I mean I've driven lots of cars, you know, I would put that up against.

I remember driving, I remember driving a particular European branded, you know, supposedly sports sedan, an Italian one, very fancy and thinking, wow, a V6 Calais would leave this car for dead on a winding road.

It had a V8 in it, this Italian thing.

And it's just like thinking this is a Dudley.

I mean compared to the VF that was like just custom made for Australian conditions, you know, it rode so well but it had so much dynamic handling for a big car.

You know, the V6 was a good engine, but the V8 was a fantastic engine.

Like I say, SSV Redline, with all the stuff they put it, like you say, they just kept improving, you know, they just kept always working to make it better and obviously they didn't know at the time it was going to be the last one.

You talk about cars like, you talk about, you know, cars that attracted attention.

I remember I took a crewman to Bathurst and honestly if I'd had a convertible Lamborghini with naked women throwing money out the back, I don't think I would have got any more looks or more attention.

Like it was, it was the singular, most, you know, looked at car I think I've ever driven at the time.

But I think, yeah, I mean getting back to it, the vf, you know, I, I personally have a lot of fond memories of the car.

I, I was lucky enough to drive halfway around Australia in it.

I drove one from the Calais V from Darwin to Sydney all the way around the coast effectively.

So we hugged the coast across to the north of Queensland and came down the coast and it was just, yeah, I mean like genuinely one of my favorite memories of my, you know, my professional career.

You know, shout out to our mutual friend Sam Charwood who is my co driver for that, for that trip.

We spent nine days, I mean, just driving through the outback.

I have a photo somewhere of, of this Calais in front of the Devil's Marbles in the middle of the nt and it's just that quintessentially Australian landscape with the Quintessential Australian car.

And I think it was such a shame.

And I think a big part of the reason why Holden ultimately failed was because they brought in, you know, the zb.

Being an Opal, you know, you just, you just couldn't do it, right?

Like, you know, you can't, you can't pretend it's something it's not.

You know, don't, don't, don't, don't serve me tofu and tell me it's steak, right?

Like, it's, you know, if you tell me it's tofu, I might eat it.

But if you just, like you're trying to pretend it's something it's not, that's, you know, it just didn't work because, because it was so inferior to what came before.

It wasn't a bad car, the ZB Commodore, by any stretch, but it was not a Commodore.

No.

You know, I think Holden again in those, in those final years, I think in some ways lost track of who they were.

And I remember the argument at the time was, oh, you know, the, you know, the original Commodore was an Opal, and so it's sort of coming back.

Well, no, but that's not really what the original, the original Commodore was still built here and it was modified and it was changed and it was, it became something different.

And that was the ultimate evolution.

You know, the lessons learned on Toronto, the lessons learned on Monaro, you know, even the cultural impact of Sandman, all those sorts of things all added up to, to, to make this, you know, truly fantastic car, you know, and it was, it's such a shame that we, that we lost it, but I, you know, I feel incredibly grateful that I got to spend so much time driving it and driving the variants of it, because it was truly a, A fantastic, fantastic car.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I sometimes think about it now that when I first started my career, the first, you know, six, seven years all the way through, or certainly the motor years, like, you'd be at Holden, you'd be at Port Melbourne picking up a Commodore every second week.

Like, the car calendar was full of them.

You just drove them all the time.

And then they just went, it just stopped.

It left such a massive, massive hole.

And that's the thing.

The weeks you weren't driving Commodores, you're probably driving Falcons.

Yeah.

And even I think now it's almost really hitting home now.

We're almost a decade on the hole that it's left in Australian culture and Australian economics and Australian industry and all that sort of stuff.

But without getting too serious on that sort of stuff.

It was, it was the culmination of everything the company had learned over 70 years about making cars and they'd done.

And like I said, all the, all the variants were great.

The Utes were awesome.

The SSVs got the headlines because they had the most.

But the Caprice.

Oh, comfy.

So much space.

The Calais were great.

You could drive them on a dirt road.

You could.

And then it's interesting to sort of go full circle now that Rob Tribbiani, who was such a big part of why those cars were so good to drive, is now obviously at GWM, back at Lang Lang, trying to make the Utes and the SUVs that we now buy, give them some of those same flavors and some of that same capabilities.

So, yeah, log live the vf.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's something I didn't touch on.

Was the Ute.

You know, by the end, that was Australia's sports car.

Vf.

Vf.

SSV was our version of a Camaro.

Yep.

You know, like, I mean, that's why, you know, it was, it was classic, you know.

Yeah.

Payload.

Who gives a crap?

You know, it's funny that we even now, I guess, you know, we see it with Ranger Raptor, you know, being.

People don't really.

A lot of Ute buyers aren't that fussed about payout.

They want a performance car.

And the Ute became the performance car because, look, it obviously dated back before that, before vf.

Like, it had been an evolving trend we'd seen with VE and even going back to VT to a degree.

But, you know, it was, it became.

Yeah.

Again, that sort of cultural marker for Australia was, you know, a two door sports car.

It's got a really big open boot.

That's what it was.

So, yeah, anyway, that's, that's my choice.

What is it your number one.

I don't know if I've got a drumroll sound effect.

Haven't worked out this podcasting caper just yet, but what have you got?

Simply because it doesn't like Holden doesn't exist.

And if we're talking about significant Holden's, if we're having our museum exhibit, exhibit at the World of Cars.

World Car Institute.

World Car.

I can't remember what I called it.

World Institute of Cars.

We go either way.

We haven't copy.

We've got to see which isn't copyrighted yet.

It's so important.

I mean you know the Prime Minister flagged off the first one off the production line.

You know it's, it's pretty, it was pretty important.

It was a pretty big deal.

But also the reason it's number one is that it set the blueprint for all that we were just talking about vf, Right.

The, what was it?

The Evoque at the very, at the very end still had a six cylinder engine in the front.

It had room for four people.

It had a big boot and it was rear wheel drive.

Like it, it's really did set the template and maybe that's why you talk about the ZB not being accepted like needed to, but it strayed from the template that had been Australia's own car for 70 years.

Yeah, like you say there is that.

There is that shared DNA that goes there where it wasn't, you know, there was a break with, with zb.

It became something else.

It became a, you know, a different species so to speak.

Because it was, because it was so different.

But yeah, I mean it's fascinating I think.

Yeah, obviously I agree.

You know, like we were saying before, it is the Holden.

And yeah, like you know, yeah, without turned into a, into sort of a political diatribe.

I mean it is such a shame that we don't make things like this anymore.

Yeah.

You know, like Australia, you know, it's important to remember, you know, remember I think it was something like there was 13 countries in the world at the time, you know, just over a decade ago where you could take a blank piece of paper and finished with a mass produced car.

You know, we were one of them.

You know you had these fantastic, you know, design studios and manufacturing facilities and yeah, I think we're both really lucky that we were able to experience that because yeah, like you were saying like you know you, there were so many holdings to pick up.

I you know, go into, you know, Port Melbourne, you know, Holden HQ was, was always a special experience.

You know.

Like it was, it was, it was a really cool part for me of Australian culture.

You Know that Australia, something that we as a country could have been, you know, we were really proud of.

And it's a shame that for a variety of factors we don't do it anymore.

You know.

You know, I get it.

I'm not a politician, I'm not a businessman.

I get that there is a, you know, financial reality to what was happening and those sorts of things.

There's also just, you know, there's a reality the government frankly pops up a lot of businesses and there's only, there's many car industries in the world that don't have some sort of government support.

And you know, so it's, you know, it's a little funny now we sit here and there's a lot of complaints about the Chinese car industry.

You know, they're subsidized too much.

It's like, well there's nothing stopping us subsidizing except a will to do it.

And so we, we as a country chose not to do it.

So yeah, I mean I think it was but you know, like that Holden, you know, the original car like you say it was, the car was good.

I mean like you say it was flawed but yeah, it had a really, it was really popular.

You know, the price was right, it delivered what people needed because yeah, other options were stuff coming out of, you know, probably England.

So it had more space, it had way more performance.

And it's funny, like it wasn't a performance car but compared to what everything around it at the time, man, it was like an SSV redline.

Like you had twice the horsepower of some of that Triumph or whatever MG stuff that you had to, that your other option was.

So I think Aussies, it really hit the nail on the head of what Aussies wanted.

It was Australia's own car and you know, we're talking about Holden's.

But then suddenly Australia as a concern became viable for Ford to stay start making cars here we got all that and then we, you know, Valiant and Mitsubishi and Toyota and there we go.

So it really did set us on our, on our way as a country, I think.

Yeah, I mean, you know we're talking about V8s before I was sort of saying, you know, they are culturally ingrained.

But there's, there's no doubt that for equally for, for the longest time the big Aussie six was, was yeah, just as big a part of, if not a bigger part, you know, statistically than, than the V8 because yeah, like you say it offered more power, you know, like these half hearted little Pomi cars.

Weren't built for Australia, you know, big, big, wide, tough Australia, you know.

And so Holden met that demand.

And so that's why.

That's why it worked.

That's why, you know, it.

It became popular.

It's why Holden then went on and lasted for as long as it did because gave Australian car buyers what they wanted.

And ultimately, that's the old.

That's the main purpose a car should exist.

Right?

It's.

It's to meet the demand of a customer.

So.

Yeah, and to set up the appetite.

I think the appetite's still there.

Again, to take it back to what we started with, the Utes.

Okay.

There are tax advantages and stuff in this country, why people buy Utes, but equally, people still want that car that can theoretically go anywhere and do anything.

That's why we buy so many Land Cruisers and patrols and Utes and stuff like that.

Because, you know, if we.

If someone still offered, if Kia had come out with the Tasman with a V8 in would have sold.

Yeah, look at the patrol.

Sales still going nuts.

Even though it's got a massive.

You know, I wouldn't want to fuel a patrol, but people out there do.

So there's still that appetite.

There's just not the locally made product anymore.

So.

But thank God we got to experience plenty of them while we did.

Yeah, yeah, no doubt.

I feel very, very privileged to have driven so many of them and, you know, experience them really at their peak, you know, at the before.

You know, before we ended up with the.

The sad demise.

But I think it's important to remember Holden, celebrate Holden for what it is and what it was and.

And hopefully, you know, I.

Obviously, GM has a very different presence in Australia now.

Arguably, it makes more sense, but, you know, this is fascinating.

You know, we see it on Talk Cafe with our stories.

If we write about Holden, readers still love to hear about it because, yeah, it's just been such a part of our.

Our cultural DNA.

All right, well, thanks for that, Scotty.

I think that was really good.

Not too much disagreement or match him, but that's good.

So, anyway, look, you're the listeners.

You tell us what you think.

Do you agree?

Did we get it right?

Did you prefer Scott's list or my list?

Or are you just already swearing at us through your favorite podcast device?

Are you madly writing all caps comments down the bottom, telling us what a bunch of idiots we are?

And either way, let us know.

We want to know your top five, Holden, so let us know in the comments or on social media.

And we hope you enjoyed the talk.

So, yeah, thanks for that, Scott.

Hopefully let's do it again soon.

See you next time.