Nearly 40 yrs of Commodore Highlights

	It was way back in 1978 when the first Commodore was released to replace the very successful Kingswood. It wasn’t really a Holden but a rebadged Opel and it failed badly until it was reengineered to cope with the Australian & New Zealand driving conditions. Holden was reacting to the energy crisis of the time but jumped too quickly compared to Ford as the Falcon continued to outsell the Commodore.
	The VN Commodore was next in 1988 influenced again by the German Opel. Under the hood was a Buick V6 engine with much better performance. Problems showed up with the bumpers fading in the hot sun but the VN did help Holden reclaim some of the sales previously lost to the Falcon. They then swapped the lead many times until 1997.
	The VT arrived in 1997 and was the most successful by numbers for Commodore. Success came from the sleek design, interior and handling ability. The Falcon had gone into an ugly phase that helped and sales take off making the VT the most sold of all Commodores. However no Commodore ever surpassed the HQ Kingswood of the 1970’s.
	The VE model was born in 2006 at an estimated cost of a billion Australian dollars. The mountain of cash was swallowed up in design, development, engineering & manufacture. The VE was a genuine Australian Commodore from the ground up with no real connection to Germany or Opel. The timing was unfortunate for Holden as well as many other car manufactures as the global financial crisis was beginning to take hold killing off any chance of a major success.
	The 2013 VF Commodore is a heavily revised version of the VE and features lightweight aluminium panels, new styling, new interior and state of the art technology like forward crash alert and a windscreen display on some higher specified models. The VF Series II that will go on sale in October 2015 will be the most advanced Commodore to date. It’s always good to finish on a strong note, as the Australian made Commodore will disappear from our markets after 2017. We are heading back to 1978 with rebadged Opel’s posing as Commodores.