I love the guages though. 👍
The new interior designs look great. 👍
Guess this explains it. 
The Design Story - Interior
Holden's determination to make the interior of VE Commodore a special place to be was aided by flexible thinking. By BRUCE NEWTON.
Holden has developed a clever design process that allows increased interior differentiation between different models in VE Commodore range.
Called the 'flex strategy', it splits the line-up into three fundamental streams. The Omega and Berlina are 'functional' models, the SV6, SS and SS-V the 'performance' models and Calais and Calais V are classified as 'luxury' models.
Underpinning these divisions is the ability to fit fundamentally different looking components to the same set of interior hard points. It means the level of individualisation for VE is far greater than VT-VZ.
Components such as audio units, instrument clusters, seats and much more were designed and developed to suit the different streams.
"This allowed maximum difference between components, without significantly increasing investment costs or plant complexity," explained VE interior design manager John Field.
"For example, the functional, performance and luxury models each have specific centre stack features, mouldings, displays, decorations and illumination colours appropriate for their positioning.
"These high visual impact components could be changed at reasonable cost, while other more expensive but less visually overt parts such as the instrument panel pads are shared."
But back in the early part of 2001 when the interior design team started blue-skying VE's interior design the flex strategy didn't exist.
Instead, they were working to a broad vision of creating a spacious, safe interior, with optimized storage, packaging and ergonomics.
All sorts of concepts from ultra conservative to futuristic were sketched. Even a BMW iDrive-style mouse controller was considered as part of the package.
But Field admitted that didn't last long, perhaps a good thing considering the sustained criticism BMW and iDrive have suffered.
"We just didn't think it suited where we were head with the car," said Field. "We'd already done a lot of human-machine interface (HMI) work and that's been further refined for VE."
By late 2001 five serious proposals had emerged and the process had swapped from pen and paper to clay and Alias computer aided design.
The choices were then further pared down to two. One was Field's own design with horizontal themes, the other with more vertical emphasis was by the youngest member of the team, Warrack Leach.
The problem was that by mid-2002 a single theme was meant to be picked. That's where the flex strategy saved much gnashing of teeth and debate. It emerged as a concept from the colour and trim department, a group that obviously works in very close concert with the interior design team.
As a result the decision was made to adopt a vertical 'waterfall' theme for the performance models and separate horizontal designs for the functional and luxury streams.
Individualisation includes the 'after-burner' look of the SS meters and the pull-out hoppers in the doors of the premium models.
At the end of 2002, Venture Advanced Design and Engineering was contracted to execute the design concept to the final production surface release level, under Holden Design direction. Execution of some components such as audio head units and instrument clusters also remained Holden's responsibility.
From this point it was a case of refining the different designs. The concept sign-off was in late 2003, but the nitty gritty of component design finalisation continued on into early 2004. At the end of the process, more than 580 interior components had been created by the VE team.
Common to all interior treatments is the way the fundamental instrument has been pushed down and away to give the perception of spaciousness without compromising ergonomics.
A conscious effort has been made to 'shrink wrap' structure, hardware and safety features to maximise interior spaciousness. Every door has a storage bin that packages a 600mm bottle and the front doors can carry a full sized wine bottle.
An overhead console is available that includes a DVD player, while a sunroof can be fitted at the same time. Front seat horizontal travel is a massive 264mm, claimed to be an industry leader. Vertical travel is 55mm.
While there's no doubt how dramatically changed the interior design is, the actual measurements and spaciousness lines up very closely to the old car.
"Our target for interior dimensions was based on VZ. It was a case of 'when you are onto a good thing, stick to it'," said Holden design director Tony Stolfo.
The crucial H (or hip) point measurement are common to VZ, although some other critical dimensions do climb slightly.
Couple distance (between front and rear hip points) increases 6mm to 863mm, while both front and rear legroom climbs by 15mm to 1071mm and 1001mm respectively. Rear knee room is 102 mm, up 6 mm.
The old gooseneck hinges in the boot have been replaced with a four-bar hinge system, which substantially increases usable volume by 31 litres.
There is still no split-fold rear seat though. Instead, a fold-down armrest doubles as a pass-through, giving flexibility for longer storage items."
-DRIVE.AU
🤬 
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