Is holden basicall vauxhall?

[Watto]

The Holden Commodore is also sold in the US, and used as one of the police cars, the chassis I am led to belive is all designed and developed here in OZ as are the 6 cyl engines, the v8's are the Chev LS series.
so all the kids over here pull off there Holden badges and put on Chevy badges to replace them.
There have been a few Gm world cars sold over here, astra, vectra and the classic gemini was the same the Opel Kadette and Chevette.

No, the V6's have always been an American designed GM global engine. The current Alloytec, I believe, is cast in Mexico than assembled here. The LS V8s are also GM global engines (not so much Chev anymore). They come here fully built in a crate.

The only engine currently made that is fully designed, engineered, and but here is the Falcon/Territory's Inline6. It was originally an American engine over 40 years ago (same as Falcon) built it has been a solely Australian made and used product ever since. It's nicknamed Grandpa's axe for good reason, it may be the same axe, but it's has like 3 new heads and 8 new handles over the years . The only thing it has in common with the original is the bore spacings.

The bold statement is incorrect, the monaro was totally an australian design and idea based on the VT commodore coupe concept car which was unveiled to the public at one of our motorshows it was instantly dubbed the new monaro by the public although that was not the name of the car, the car was an after hours secret project that not even the holden execs knew about until almost the last minute. The car was put into production 2 years later due to overwhelming public demand and The head of GM at the time Bob Lutz took allot of interest in the vehicle on a trip to Australia and shortly after that the decision was made by Lutz to rebadge the car as the GTO for sale in the U.S.

Well, technically, the Commodore, though heavily modified, has always been based on the Opel Rekford chassis right up to 2006 when the all-new VE was fully designed here from scratch. VE has a much nicer stance and better weight distribution.

The Monaro name was revived as we have not had a Monaro model since 1979 and none ever based on the commodore platform. Holden and their Zeta rear wheel drive platform are acknowledged as the world centre for rear wheel drive excellence within all GM brands.

Holden and Ford Australia are in interestingly similar positions. They are both Australian companies that are owned and controlled by Ford and GM. They have some creative freedom, but ultimately the big decisions are made at GM and FoMoCo. They both only make large passenger cars (wagon/ute/SUV variants) and import EVERYTHING else. Holden enjoys it's Aussie-made reputation while Ford (here in Aus) is viewed as American by any non-car people because it shares the same badge. They are also both suffering from media-bashing at the moment, constant made-up rumors that one or both could be going to FWD.

The Zeta is a large and flexible platform that is supposed to go under many GM cars. I've been hearing worrying rumors of late, that the next Camaro could be going on the smaller Epsilon-II platform. That'd be a huge shame and a waste, because Holden did a great job with Zeta.

FordAUS is also getting some recognition, having recently designed the new global Ranger platform and designing the Ford Figo (designed for production/consumption in India) which is going great guns. I'm hoping FordUS give them the go ahead to design the Global RWD for Falcon and Mustang, same as GMHolden built Zeta for Commodore and Camaro. It would be a huge improvement of Mustangs old live rear axle.

The Vauxhall Cavalier was originally based on the Opel Ascona, but had a different front end. The Opel Vectra replaced the Ascona and so the next Vauxhall Cavalier was actually a rebadged Vectra. In 1995 the Vectra B was launched and they dropped the Cavalier name. The Vectra has since been replaced by the Insignia.

Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Vectra

XPower are you forgeting the VX220? While it was built by Lotus it is basically a new car that is a Vauxhall/Opel not an Lotus Elise.

Holden exports Commodore to New Zealand and to the middle-east as a Chevy Lumina. It's luxury LWB Commodore's (The Statesmen/Caprice) are sent to China as a Buick ?????? (I forget the name). The Monaro was sent to US for a time as Pontiac GTOs. The current VE was sent to US as a Pontiac G8 (and the ute and wagon models were supposed to go over as well). That all ended when Pontiac folded during the GFC. Currently, they are looking to grab a big slice of the Police fleet in US by building a specially built LWB PPV model. I haven't checked lately to see how that is going. The high Aussie dollar may hurt this venture.

Ford Aus exports the Falcon and Territory (Falcon-based SUV) to NZ and some Territorys to South Africa.

GM shares many cars across many brands of it's global empire. The Commodore(Monaro) is the only Aussie-made Holden since the last of the Camiras were built here. Until early this century, nearly all of Holden's passenger car range (except Commodore obviously) were re-badged Opels.

Now, the same cars in Holdens range are re-badged Daewoos. I know the Koreans are really coming along with Hyundai, but I just couldn't touch any of Holden's Daewoo-based range. The Opels were much more to my liking.

So, unless a person looks into a cars history, they can easily make some pretty wrong assumptions

 

[WalkerInTN]

Vauxhall, Opel , Holden ; 3 different companies owned by one parent group, GM.

3RD, Holden. A classic Australian brand with limited success beyond the Australian border. The Holden Monaro was a joint excercise with Pontiac who named their version simply 'GTO' and was practicaly identical apart from such corperate identity things as grilles, wheels and badging.

You're trying to give Pontiac too much credit. Bob Lutz drove the Holden Monaro in Australia while on a trip there & thought the car was too good for the US to miss out on, so it was rebadged as a Pontiac. Definitely not a joint excercise.

When Vauxhall wanted something to lift their dull image they did the only thing they know and re-badged a Holden, claiming all the glory along the way. Whenever i see a Monaro or the newer VXR8's just the sight of the Vauxhall badge does my head in - it's a Holden, end of story.

Same thing Pontiac did for years, sell rebadged GM cars. The GTO was just another example of that. The up side is that the Monaro is a great little car. Wish I still had my 2004 GTO.

 

[Barkerland45]

have a search for pics of the holden maloo ute (pickup) , its basically a monaro pickup truck with the same crazy v8 engine but much less weight (zero over the driven wheels nearly).