Attitude By The Wagonload
The Age
Wednesday December 19, 2007
David Morley reports on bread-and-butter family wheels with street cred.
FOR those who like their family cars with big engines and lots of attitude, the Commodore SS has been a long-time favourite. It combines those elements in a package that is not only vast inside, it's also readily identifiable by the neighbours and requires no explanation at the golf club.Station wagons, however, have suffered from a long-term image problem - they're usually based on low-rent models with average engines and automatic-only drivelines.Holden addressed the situation in 2003 with the Commodore SS station wagon. Like the SS sedan, the VY Commodore offered a whole lot of bang for your buck and did it with a degree of flair in terms of presentation. OK, maybe it was more lair than flair, but there's no mistaking the SS wagon as bread-and-butter family wheels.The heart of the matter was Holden's (or rather, Chevrolet's) 5.7-litre alloy V8 engine. All alloy it may have been, but beyond that it was very much a traditional lump with its single camshaft buried deep in the engine's valley and but two valves per cylinder.But never mind that bronze-age specification, because whatever it lacked in sophistication it made up for in cubic inches.Yet despite displacing nearly 6.0 litres, the engine never felt especially perky from idle and to get it to really deliver required the driver to rev it hard. Do that, though, and all 235 kW were available at around 4500 rpm and from there it stormed across the face of the tachometer, dragging the scenery with it.It could be pretty noisy, though, and while the exhaust was well muffled, the engine contributed a collection of buzzes, whirrs and sometimes even rattles. Some were worse than others, but broad opinion is that the engines (built in South America) were of variable quality.Some had a horrendous thirst for oil and others leaked oil on every available driveway.To be fair, the later versions of the engine (as seen in the models we are talking about) were much better and had most of the bugs ironed out. It's still worth a compression check as part of any pre-purchase inspection.Transmission choices consisted of Holden's rugged but vague four-speed automatic or the cranky, stubborn, six-speed manual.Keener buyers will plump for the latter, but even allowing for the sometimes unpredictable shifting, the auto is the nicer car to drive day to day.Inside, most Commodores used hard-wearing cloth trim that might look a bit second-hand today if the previous occupants were the average family, complete with ice-cream spills and other mishaps. In that regard, the SS wagon has a break on the rest of the field because it was optioned up to include leather trim. The sporty touches included 17-inch alloy wheels with low-profile tyres that look great but aren't cheap to replace.A body kit was part of the deal and the wagon was available in a range of tasty SS colours that the rest of the Commodore line-up missed out on.Standard equipment runs to air-conditioning, cruise control, remote central locking, electric height-adjustment on the driver's seat, firmer suspension and a trip computer.Safety gear was extensive, too, including dual front airbags, anti-lock brakes, traction control and seatbelt pre-tensioners.A limited model, the SS station wagon was phased out around the middle of 2004 after the upgrade to VY Series II trim. In all, 850 SS wagons were built, so finding one should be possible if you are patient.WHAT TO PAYRelative rarity has kept values buoyant and you'll still need to find at least $28,000 for a decent example. The Series II wagons are closer to the low $30,000 mark, but you might find a bargain privately. Even so, it's a fair bit of fast car for the money.THE COMPETITIONThe logical competitor would be any of Ford's V8-powered station wagons of the same era. This period was a bit of a watershed for Ford V8s, with the earlier AU model soldiering on with the old pushrod 5.0-litre V8 and the replacement BA getting the high-tech 5.4-litre DOHC unit.
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