What will Holden do regarding Euro III???

[brodfloyd]

Hey guys, i dont know whether this has been covered, but I just read the thread about the XR8's costing too much and so on.

And it got me thinking about EURO III and all that jazz, what are holden going to do from january??? Im not looking to rubbish holden or its cars but i haven't heard anything about a VZ2 or whatever they would call it. I just havent heard about an update to make their cars Euro 3 compliant.

Reading MOTOR this month and the spy pics of the VE they said that the release date for the car was september next year, pushed back from february. So what are holden going to do in the mean time??? Ford has just done BF and the whole engine range is EURO3 compliant. I dont know about the V6 (i think they might be, or if not, fairly easy to make compliant) but i do know that the V8's they offer are not Euro 3 compliant.

Now, if the realise date for VE was going to be Feb i could see the sense in Holden not offering the V8's for the 2 months that they would be on sale as at least part of the cost would be wasted on making it compatable on a near-extinct platform.

However, it isnt, and even if it was i also read that the wagon and ute will be kept the same until 2008 and they have a large number of V8 variants, so i cant see holden not offering the gen 3 or 4 engines in the VZ range next year. let alone the utter pasting they would get from motoring journo's (some would still claim the SV6 goes harder/better than a GT tho). So in summary, holden will no doubt offer a V8 cos i would just be stupid not to.


Now, holden might just be waiting for the dust to settle from the release of BF and the 380 magna before releasing their new product which makes sense(and using their considerable publicity and marketing skills to promote the VZ2 or whatever they call it to the aussie public as the-reinvention of the wheel) but i havent seen or heard any sign of it, thought i may just be looking in the wrong places.

Or, Holden may just make the cars compliant and not call it VZII, though, i would think this unlikely as Ford did some pretty major work in alot of areas to make BF, and although not all of it was to do with being Euro 3 complient, some was, eg, not losing power from the engines whilst making them quieter, lowering emisions and more fuel economy, and from a marketing perspective promoting the efficiency/environmental freindliness of an updated car cant hurt sales. And i think that VZ is at least a year old and holden have a habit of Series2/3-ing things on an annual basis, so i cant see this happening either.

My question is, what are holden doing/done/going to do to make their range of commodores Euro 3 complient for next year before the introduction of the VE??? do they even have to do it if they arent releasing a new model??? Most of the talk i hear about GM and GMH is how they are gonna go belly up ( i live in a very biased ford area, and it sounds like although GM is globally in trouble, so is ford but not quite as bad, and it sounds like all a bit of a beat up anyway) and i cant get any sense out of anyone (my dad said "why u asking about holdens anyway???, dont make me take u out of my will boy!")

And, how far away is VE anyway??? there are alot of rumours about cost blowouts, parts/price trouble, and engineering problems (a rumoured 5 link rear end tho, sounds impressive, but man would it be costly, dont ya think) and the effect of the 11 month development freeze on the Zeta archiatecture.

I hope that made sense.

peace.
brod