Mad Max Makes a Pontiac
The new GTO will come from Australia, but will that be all?
Extracted article by Mark Vaughn, 30 January 2003, www.autoweek.com

Yes, the Pontiac GTO is coming to our shores from Australia at the end of this year and it should be terrific fun to drive once it gets here.

But first, a few things you always wanted to know about Oz: 1) The water really does circulate counterclockwise down the drains; 2) When seen alive and hopping across their natural habitat, kangaroos look surprisingly like enormous, bouncing rats and; 3) A well-flung boomerang can come back and hit you real hard on the head.

Before actually going there we, like you, got all we knew about Australia from three highly reliable sources: Mad Max the movie, Crocodile Dundee the movie, and TV commercials for Foster’s Lager. Now that we’ve actually been to Oz, it turns out the United States is the only place in the world where anyone drinks Foster’s Lager, Mel Gibson was born in Peekskill, New York, and Mick "Crocodile" Dundee, okay, he was a real person.

And they have a car industry, which was why we went there. Production starts in November on the U.S. version of the Holden Monaro CV8, which will be imported here as the Pontiac GTO. The GTO was revealed at the Los Angeles and Detroit auto shows earlier this month.

The question at hand: Does the Holden Monaro CV8 make a fitting Pontiac GTO? That’s no trifling matter. The GTO has been the embodiment of a long line of muscle cars about which thousands of owners are very passionate, if "very passionate" is a strong enough term. Since John Z. DeLorean put a 389 in a Pontiac Tempest for the 1964 model year to launch a decade’s worth of them, the Goat has been an icon. After a day behind the wheel in a right-hand-drive Australian-spec version going down the wrong side of the road, our answer to the Monaro-as-GTO question was a tentative "yes."

The answer got less tentative at the L.A. show, where Pontiac said the plan was for the U.S. GTO to make 340 hp, or 35 more than the Holden version. So, combined with its 360 lb-ft of torque, the answer to whether it’s a fitting GTO successor is now a more enthusiastic "yes!" We’re eager to see how the car feels in full American Pontiac trim when we get to drive one this summer.

While it has power, overall it’s a more refined GTO than ever before, which is how it will be marketed here in the United States.

"We felt it would fulfill our customers’ expectations of what a GTO should be," said Pontiac GTO marketing head Bob Kraut. "It’s an icon, a halo vehicle for us."
Does that mean we can look at it as a Firebird/Camaro replacement?

"No, that was never a consideration," said Kraut. "GTO represents a broader bandwidth than a Firebird. What’s in it for us is being able to conquest people who would not in the past consider a Pontiac."

Oldsmobile was supposed to conquest all those people who would not in the past consider an Oldsmobile, too, and we all know what happen-ed to them.

If it sounds as if Pontiac is writing off all those guys pining away on enthusiast websites for tiger tails, Judges and screaming chickens, that’s right.

"The GTO is not a retro vehicle, it’s a modern expression of Pontiac Excitement," said Kraut, sounding ever the salesman.

Kraut lists the Mustang Cobra SVT as one competitor, but then goes on to include "high-performance luxury coupes and high-sport two-seaters." He said the price for the GTO will be between $30,000 and $35,000. So that would mean competitors like the BMW 325Ci, Mercedes C230 Sport Coupe and SLK, we’d imagine. Tough competition with a whole new set of buyers. But if you look at the specs of the car, you don’t see high-tech Euro-luxury performance. You see good old American iron.

First, it will be powered by the 5.7-liter Gen III V8 engine from the Corvette. There’s no better engine choice in GM. But as good as the Gen III is, it’s not the exotic powertrain high-performance luxury coupe buyers seek.

We will get a choice of GM’s 4L60E four-speed automatic or the six-speed manual shared with the Corvette. There will be no cost added for either choice.

Final drive ratio will be a drag-friendly 3.46:1.Holden engineers say there will be minimal changes to the Monaro’s MacPherson strut front suspension and semi-trailing independent rear. Those include revised front and rear springs, shocks and sway bars, and a control link for the independent rear suspension. The changes will not necessarily make the Goat softer, but Holden engineers said you do have to make some concessions for potholes and frost heaves.

"Most of the changes are in the powertrain, not in the ride and handling," said Kraut. "Except the tires." Australian CV8s come with 235/40ZR-18 tires, but all we know of the U.S. wheel-tire combination is that it will offer all-season treads on uniquely styled, 18-inch wheels.

Steering will be speed-sensitive rack-and-pinion, with the American GTO getting its own, slightly stiffer steering gear.

So while we didn’t get behind the wheel of the American GTO, we did drive four versions of the Holden Commodore platform, one of which was the Monaro CV8. And how was that?

It wasn’t a Corvette, of course, but it wasn’t a Bonneville, either. After
getting over being in the wrong side of the car and on the wrong side of the road,
driving the Monaro was fun. The throws in the six-speed felt about as long as they
do in the Corvette, which is long, but the steering felt nicely weighted and responded quickly enough to a crank on the wheel. The wheel itself has a fat, GM-sized grip, which was comfortable.

The four-wheel discs felt a little less tight than we’d have preferred, but they were good by GM standards for pedal feel.Feedback through the wheel and through the seat was a bit muffled, in a GM kind of way. The car doesn’t communicate what it’s doing with the immediacy of a high-performance entry luxury coupe or a high-sport two-seater. That will put off a lot of those BMW cross-shoppers. Yet neither does it spaz out when it hits a bump in a fast corner, the way a solid-beam rear-axled Camaro/Firebird would have.

The control of all that curb weight was impressive. While it does roll more than a BMW, the transition from one side to the other is smooth and even. It doesn’t just flop over and squeal like an old Buick. The curb weight is listed at 3615 pounds for the car we drove but 3584 pounds is the weight target for the GTO version (that’s a pretty specific figure for a target).

Holden says the Australian version gets to 62 mph in 6.6 seconds. With its lighter curb weight and added power, we expect the Pontiac GTO will achieve its promised 0-to-60 time of 5.9 seconds.

So the Monaro/GTO sounds promising. But that’s not all we learned in Oz. On the same trip Down Under we drove three other Holdens with varying chances of
seeing U.S. showrooms.

The not-for-U.S.-sale Monaro CV6 we drove with an automatic was perfectly fine as a comfortable commuter, but the V8 would surely convey all that Pontiac Excitement stuff better.

There was a VY SS Ute V8 automatic that would loosely translate as an El Camino if it ever came over here. The Ute V8 is highly sought after in Oz by aspirational young male buyers looking to impress the mates down at the shearing station. It carries much the same platform and drivetrain as the V8 Monaro coupe we drove and we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it arrive on our shores someday, especially given the continuing American infatuation with all things truck.

And, most fun of all in our day of driving was the HSV GTS sedan. HSV stands for Holden Special Vehicles, sort of like Ford’s SVT division or BMW’s M. HSV makes all sorts of fun things, including race cars that have won seemingly every touring car race ever held south of the equator.

The HSV GTS is based on a Commodore sedan (same platform as our GTO), but felt nothing like a big floater of a four-door. It was tuned to be so responsive that we quickly stopped worrying about being on the right-hand side of everything and just simply hammered it for miles and miles along the coast road toward Sydney.

At the GTO’s unveiling in Los Angeles, Bob Lutz said that virtually everything HSV makes for the Monaro would be available to American GTO buyers as soon as the
car arrives on our shores.

This startled everyone else we spoke to that day, including Holden and Pontiac people, who said there were no such plans. But if they can make the entire GTO ready for us
in so short a time, they can certainly throw together some HSV GTO springs and shocks for the dealer parts catalog, eh mates?

Of the four Holdens we drove, from passenger cars to pickups, all seemed to have a strong element of fun to them. How was that possible when the same parent com-pany that built the Holdens in Australia also made all those front-drive GM10 Olds Cutlass Supreme and Pontiac Grand Prix cars in America?

"We are a kind of petrolhead company here," said Holden chairman Peter Hanenberger, using the Australian/British word for gearhead. "Our strength, of course, is the rear-wheel-drive. And the motorsports."

Like Mel Gibson, Hanen-berger is not Australian. He came from Opel, where he
was director of the Technical Development Center in Russelsheim. But like Gibson’s Mad Max, Hanenberger likes muscle cars - big, V8-powered, rear-drive muscle cars. And that breed is something of a specialty at Holden.

So yes, the Holden-made Pontiac GTO will be here later this year and that’s a good thing. But the real news will come when and if GM starts offering us more of
its rear-drive V8-powered Holden muscle cars. Let’s hope it does.