March 05, 2015

Horse 1852 - What Holden Did Next? Let's Go There?

This post is a guess. I'm speculating. You may wish to get a mop and bucket to clean up the mess.


If you'd been watching the Twitter account for Cadillac Europe for the past month or so, you'd have seen that they've been crowing about their CTS and ATS. These are cars so unimaginatively named, that to be honest, I still don't know which one is which. (I've already complained about this in Horse 1771 - watch soon for the Cadillac KFC BBQ).

To clue you in, the CTS sits atop the GM Alpha Platform which is what the current Zeta Platformed Camaro will switch to after the end of that program (and once Holden dies), and the CTS gets the same 2.0L inline-4 as the Opel Insignia and the Holden Colorado, the same 3.6 V6 as the Commodore and the V-Series get the 6.2L V8.
Basically Cadillac have tried to reinvent the Commodore and given that the Camaro will share much of the car's DNA, it's like they looked at the entire Commodore lineup (sedan, wagon, coupe but not ute) and copied it from 1999.

Now given that the front end sort of looks like a VF Commodore and the passenger cell reminds me more of the Toyota Camry, I'm willing to make a prediction.
Holden will sell the next generation Insignia in lieu of the Commodore and the CTS and ATS in place of their HSV line up. The only thing missing will be the ute and because Holden now has as much say over its own destiny as Olaf the snowman has in the path of a lava flow, they'll try to invent some story about the Colorado and that'll be it.

If General Motors decided to introduce Cadillac as its own brand in Australia, I don't think that Australians would carry the connotations of their recent US past over (what with ignition switch recalls). Australians will remember the delightfully ostensatious cars of the 1950s and 1960s.
If Holden wants to import the CTS, ATS, CT6, KFC, ATM, BBQ, or whatever the heck they decide to call it, maybe they should consider resurrecting a few names like Brougham or Belmont, because if they don't, then like Cadillac Europe, they'll sell only 250 of these cars a year.


Aside:


This was sadly prophetic... evolution did end here.

No comments: