It’s official: Holden’s tarmac-tearing trade ute
BY BARRY PARK | 31st May 2013
The images, posted on the Holden website today, show a lustrous red VF Ute SS V Redline captured against the famous Armco wall of the track that is fast becoming a proving ground for car-makers hell-bent on establishing bragging rights with rivals.
Other shots show a helmet-clad driver – believed to be Mark Reuss, the former Holden chief who now heads up GM’s North American division – and a close-up of the racetrack-honed Brembo brake calipers tucked in behind the $48,490 Redline’s bespoke 18-inch alloys.
Holden director of product launch communications Craig Cheetham said the Redline’s trip to the unofficial home of performance benchmarking was a rare case of good timing for the car-maker rather than a carefully planned exercise.
He said the Holden team was at the track in April completing some “final engineering work” on the car ahead of its showroom launch in Australia in a few weeks’ time.
“We test and develop cars all over the world, and we happen to have a ute in Europe that we were doing dynamic testing on, and we had some space on the manufacturers’ pool day,” Mr Cheetham said.
“We decided to take advantage of that.”However, he would not be drawn on the idea that the ute was there to set a performance benchmark for a commercial vehicle, or whether the apparent involvement of Mr Reuss – an experienced engineer and the key decision-maker for all new models in the US – signalled a forthcoming export program for the two-door as a reborn Chevy El Camino.
“You’ll have to wait and see,” he said.
Holden is believed to have filmed the VF ute’s drive on the Nurburgring as part of its marketing for the commercial vehicle, which traditionally has showroom sales split almost evenly between V6- and V8-engined models.
