The successor to the Holden VF Commodore has finally been confirmed, with local managing director Mike Devereux telling journalists today that the second model line built in Adelaide from 2016 will absolutely use the Commodore name.
“In the immortal words of the late Steve Jobs, a lot of folks have been speculating about whether [VF] is the last Commodore…” said Devereux at a media event today where CarAdvice was shown the VF Commodore ahead of its launch on Sunday.
“I can categorically tell you that we have begun work on the Commodore that comes after [VF]…
“We will launch another Commodore after this one.”
“This thing [VF] will run until the end of 2016, after that time we will be putting two global architectures into the plant, one of them will be badged Commodore.”
Asked whether Devereux was referring to a facelifted version of the soon-to-be-released VF Commodore, the managing director replied “not at all”, reiterating that the next Commodore will be based on an all-new General Motors global architecture.
“We will be putting two architectures into the plant. One of them will underpin the next Commodore that replaces the VF.
“General Motors has started working on it. The team here is obviously involved in that as they have been in all sorts of things, and I will say no more of it.”
Devereux also stressed that dropping the Commodore name was never up for debate internally, despite Holden previously confirming that one of the two model lines it would build from 2016 will be the Cruze, but not until today the Commodore.
“We have absolutely no debates about it internally.
“The interesting thing about the Commodore name, and in fact the reason to lay that down today to end any speculation is that people love this nameplate, and we’re gonna have another one of these.
“We’re gonna build one in Adelaide, on a new architecture, and you’re just gonna have to wait another three years before you find out what that one is.”
Devereux would not name whether the next Commodore could be front-wheel drive, or even what bodystyle the car that would wear the iconic, rear-drive sedan nameplate would be.
“Right now we haven’t even launched and haven’t even started building the one that’s called VF yet, so we’ll leave all that speculation frankly for years from now…”
General Motors vice president of global manufacturing and president of international operations, Tim Lee, told CarAdvice at the Detroit auto show in January that Holden could “absolutely” use the GM Alpha platform, which is a global rear-wheel drive architecture designed for Cadillac products including the next-generation Commodore-sized Cadillac CTS.
The next generation Commodore could use the ‘VJ’ tag, as VG and VH have previously been used by Holden.
The Holden VF Commodore will launch at 10:45am on Sunday, February 10. CarAdvice will stream the live reveal, and bring you extensive and immediate coverage from a deep-dive VF Commodore launch program attended today.
