New Holdens wired for the world

By ALASTAIR SLOANE

Telematics. There's that word again. It means the wired world of the car, when the family four-door becomes a mobile/satellite navigation/internet/cellphone centre.

It will plan your holiday, book tickets to the pictures or rugby, order a pizza, a plumber, plants for the garden, download the latest movie ...

But the 21st century's communications package won't be limited to luxury vehicles. No siree. It will be part and parcel of the entry-level, mass-market sedan, with an optional extra here and there.

Holden, a marque Australians and New Zealanders call their own, is working on a telematics system for its Commodore VX, the upgraded sedan that goes on sale here in November.

The dedicated package will be available in Australia early next year and in New Zealand when support becomes available. The first step will offer a basic helpline: roadside assistance, emergency services, vehicle tracking and immobilisation. These are already available as an after-market service, for example, from companies such as Chubb Security.

But the all-new Commodore VY will offer fair dinkum Matrix movie-type bells and whistles when it goes on sale in 2003-2004.

For starters, an eye-in-the-sky satellite will allow Holden drivers at the end of a traffic pile-up to watch on the car's monitor what emergency services are doing about clearing the queue.

Meantime, the upgraded VX - unveiled at Bathurst at the foot of Australia's motorsport mountain, Panorama, last week - provides a glimpse of what lies ahead.

The VX facelift is mild by new-model standards, but it is charged with maintaining the popularity of the car in Australia and New Zealand until the VY pushes the envelope to include a new suspension set-up, Australian-made V6 engines, new rear end and interior design.

Holden has made the VX a user-friendlier version of its predecessor the VT, so far this year the best-selling passenger car in New Zealand.

Improvements include individual styling changes to the grille and headlights, a safer structure around the car's B pillar (between the front and rear doors), a more refined drivetrain, more powerful engines with fuel benefits, sharper steering, better standard equipment and less vibration and noise. The interior has also been updated.

"The challenge was to take an extremely successful design and freshen it while retaining its huge appeal," said Holden New Zealand managing director Graeme Coverdale.

"The solution was to retain as much of the original VT Commodore as possible and introduce graphic clues that make each model in the range more distinctive.

"In this way we've achieved the dual objectives of maintaining Commodore's design integrity and responding to customers' wishes for a more individually tailored model range," he said.

Holden might have listened to its customers but it also paid attention to what its rivals, Ford Falcon AU II, Toyota Avalon, Nissan Maxima and Mitsubishi Magna were offering.

The Commodore VT fell behind all three as far as standard features were concerned and the VX makes up lost ground to the point where it largely now leads the way, except for the optional passenger-side airbag in the Executive model.

But ABS anti-lock braking is now standard across the Commodore range, as is a single CD. How far Holden has gone is illustrated in the top-end Commodore Calais, which beats the Falcon Ghia and Avalon Grande hands-down for standard equipment.

Front-end treatment to the grille, headlights and air intakes differentiates the models, as do restyled lights at the rear. The Executive, Acclaim, S and SS get a wider and deeper grille and polycarbonate headlights, which have a teardrop design, said to improve low and high-beam spread.

The Calais and Berlina have a full-width grille that flows into rectangular-style headlights. A colour-coded, full-width decor panel across the rear of the Calais and Berlina incorporates the tail-lights.

Holden and its safety expert Laurie Sparke has always placed much emphasis on structural strength and his input in the VX extends to improved side-impact protection, to minimise crash forces on the head, neck and chest.

This includes the use of energy-absorbing foam in the doors and redesigned panels to reduce injury to the chest and abdomen. Swedish carmaker Saab helped develop the Commodore's side airbags.

The weak point of V6 and V8 Commodore models over the years has been the driveline, the clunk and subsequent vibration on take-up. Holden says a new propshaft with rubber-damped couplings "significantly reduces vibrations, contributing to quieter and more refined acceleration." The differential has also been modified.

Also helping to reduce overall noise and harshness is the use of foam in the roof and floorpan and a noise-reflecting board in the rear parcel shelf.

Holden says that changes to the front suspension improves overall handling and gives the VX Commodore better steering responses.

Under the bonnet, the 3.8-litre V6 engine has been reworked for marginally more power with the use of a more powerful computer control unit, offering 33 per cent more memory and 8 per cent more processing power. This improves fuel economy and the spark control to each cylinder.

The V6 now develops 152kW at 5200 rmp and 305Nm at 3600 rpm. The 5.7-litre V8 engine has also received more oomph, delivering 225kW at 5200 rpm and 460Nm at 4400 rpm. So, too, has the supercharged V6, with 171kW at 5200 rpm and 375Nm at 3000 rpm.

The price of the VX range won't be available until November , but expect it to be slightly more expensive.