Preconceptions can be a dangerous thing.
I mean, take the Holden Monaro. One of the most eagerly awaited cars ever produced in this country, it mixes what can only be described as stunning looks with a strong 225kW all-alloy V8, well-sorted suspension and Holden practicality and price. Just the sort of car to sprint down a twisting country strip of bitumen, and just at home swanking down an inner city street populated with sidewalk coffee shops.
Well, that's what my preconceptions told me...
But the reality is a little different from that. This isn't a European-refinement-meets-American-V8 type of car. It looks beautiful - sure. It seems to be practical - and within the confines of having only two doors, it certainly is. But - at least in CV8 form - it's also a hard-edged, heavy and slightly ponderous car to drive. The suspension - which works well on smooth and near-smooth blacktop - bottoms-out on the poor bitumen secondary roads that are so common; the gearbox baulks when you try to change gear quickly; and the steering has lost the sharpness and speed of response which makes the other large Holdens feel wieldy and nimble despite their size. Intake noise is pleasant in note but loud - too loud for many potential buyers, we're sure.
On the road this is an old-fashioned, rumbling, snorting, traditional performance V8 muscle car, not the svelte nimble and sweet performance coupe that its looks would lead you to expect. It's indicative that the Monaro is quite tiring to drive, especially over long distances on indifferent roads.
Of course, just as it is, the Monaro will suit many buyers' expectations perfectly. But surely a far greater number would be attracted to part with their dollars by test-driving a car that is quieter, still handles very well, rides far better and has less sheer masculine weight and bravado about it?
Funny thing is, the CV8 Monaro has more than just a touch of an aftermarket hottie about the way that it rides and drives.
But let's look at the good news - cos there's plenty of that as well.
Looks, beauty, styling excellence, visual impact, grace, elegance, power, aggression, flow, detail, aura, poise.
As happened way back when the original Monaro turned an ugly Kingswood duckling into a metaphorical swan, so the current Monaro makes from the bulbous and unexciting Commodore a car that is visually superb. It looks wonderful in pictures; it looks evocative passing you on the street - and it looks even better parked at your house!
And that body has more than just looks - it works well too. The long doors open to allow easy admittance to the very comfortable and supportive electric seats. (Black, rather than the red of this interior shot.) These must have been designed by a completely different team to the one that did the suspension and intake noise suppression - had the engine team worked on the seats, carbon fibre competition shells with minimal padding would be crushing you! But nope, the Monaro seats are a perfect example of a design that would suit someone after some enthusiastic cornering support - or someone else easing a well-padded businessman-lunch bum into their shapes.
Lift the lever on the side of the backrest to tilt it forward and the whole seat electrically moves forward, allowing better access to the rear pair of seats. The young, the nimble and/or the small will easily be able to get in and out of the rear pews; the rest of us can struggle a bit. But once back there (and with the front seat electrically returned to its previous position) the accommodation is pretty good.
Headroom is a little tight for the tall, and the claustrophobic won't like the lack of opening side glass. But the Commodore vents on the back of the centre console give plenty of ventilation, and foot- and leg-room are both fine. Just as they should be - after all, the standard Commodore 2788mm wheelbase is unchanged in the Monaro. Front accommodation is sprawling, and despite vehicle height being 53mm lower than an Exec sedan (most of the drop in the lower roofline), headroom is quite adequate. The boot is also very capacious, although the floor - that lifts up to reveal a speed-limited spare - is a little flimsy.
The interior is generic Commodore, with some exclusive touches that could probably advantageously have been dispensed with. The instrument panel in the test car was an odd yellow. This background colour served to make the numbers hard to read at a glance - at night it was much better cos the background couldn't be seen! In the manual trans car the traction control 'off' button is out of sight to the right of the steering column, just next to the foglight button, which is exactly the same size and shape. And while there is a clear dashboard indication of when the traction control button is switched off, people make mistakes - and the buttons shouldn't be next to one another.
In fact, we know of one Monaro that would not have had an airbag-inflating incident with a wall, had the traction control and foglight switches been far apart. (And nope, it wasn't this writer!)
The sound system is the same 10-stacker-in-the-boot CD system used in the Calais - to be frank, it's not very good. But the individual-setting climate control works well, and the other controls - including the new stalks - are simply labelled and easy to use. With the good-looking seats and black trim of the test car, the interior doesn't look at all downmarket, as its base Commodore origins could lead you to suspect.
In fact, we've read some consumer criticism that suggests the Monaro is too expensive. But in exterior and interior looks, equipment and packaging, we'd suggest just the opposite - that it is well underpriced! But what does it drive like? Well, there the story is not all good.
On smooth roads the CV8 is very, very grippy. The special development 235/45 Z-rated Bridgestone Potenzas wrapped around huge 18 x 8 wheels cling tenaciously - get the turn-in right and the car squats under power and just grips and grips on exit. Get the turn-in wrong or be on the power too early and the car will understeer; with the application of even more power, the traction control will start shutting down the power oversteer slide before it begins.
Well, most times before it begins, anyway. One of the disappointments in the way in that the Monaro drives is that the traction control is inconsistent. At times it allows a superb power-oversteer attitude tweak of the tail, while at other times the message is an emphatic 'no'. Once, on a bumpy roundabout, the traction control behaviour degenerated into an unedifying series of kangaroo hops as the power came and went in quick succession. Even more oddly, when the traction control system can be felt operating, there is distinct and disconcerting kickback through the throttle.
The brakes - standard Commodore anchors - aren't something that you'd put your faith in for many high-speed decels, but even so, on good roads the Monaro is very quick point-to-point.
But on rougher bitumen?
W-e-l-l.
Mostly - if you can put up with the hard ride - it's OK. But certainly not always. On one stretch of road on which we drive all of our test cars, there is a corner from hell. It is a big dipping left-hander, with multiple off-camber bumps that catch the car with the suspension already compressed. And here the Monaro was absolutely lousy. As in, suspension bottoming out several times, the body shaking with the harsh impact and the car being thrown around the road.
That's not what we are used to from a factory car; it's more the expectation of the results of visiting a spring-cutting merchant at Joe's Local Suspension.
The Monaro uses 'Coupe FE2 Sports Suspension' that incorporates new changes such as "opening the primary valving (bleeds) of the shock absorbers and struts and tightening up high speed valving, new shock absorber and strut damping characteristics, and revised front springs and re-designed rear springs". From our perspective, this suspension should be an option, and something with a bit more travel and bad road forgiveness should be standard.
Another puzzle are the changes made to the steering of the Monaro. Given its identical wheelbase and very similar track to the Commodore (the latter quoted as being 10mm narrower front and back on the Monaro), we wonder why the steering ratio has been made slower by 13 per cent and its weight has been increased. Perhaps this is a change that will flow through to the other Holden big car models at the next update? We hope not, because even before we looked up the steering specs, it was obvious that the car was harder to place on a quick and winding road. It simply feels more ponderous, a description we would never have previously applied to Commodores.
And the engine? Well, we love the 5.7. Despite the one in this car feeling off the pace compared with our last test of it in the VT SS Commodore (see breakout box), it's still a superbly responsive and strong engine. With the 3.46 diff ratio the gearing of the six-speed remains ludicrously high (sixth is very rarely used) but the all-alloy V8 is a delightful workhorse. This time, though, we found it rather thirsty, with around-town figures as high as 18 litres/100km.
Conclusion? Well, the CV8 Monaro will find many happy customers, just as it is. But we think that the car would be a greater success if the suspension and steering distanced itself from the muscle cars of the past and were spec'd with the realisation that not everyone wants to listen to a bellowing V8 as they drive around only on smooth bitumen.
But, in the grand scheme of things of a whole new model, these are aspects that can be easily fixed. Perhaps even by introducing an LS model... after all, it's been done before.
Oh, and did we say? We love how it looks...
|
Holden Monaro CV8 Fast Facts...
- Superbly beautiful body
- Practical, roomy coupe
- Engine noise loud, especially on acceleration
- Handling and ride on smooth roads excellent
- Handling and ride on rough roads much less acceptable
- Good equipment level
- Some question marks over build quality
- Good performance but can be thirsty
- Low price for car of this type
|
The CV8 Monaro was provided for this test by Holden Ltd.
|
|
How Fast?
The CV8 Monaro runs a revised intake to the airbox that creates more induction noise. And, like most loud cars, it feels fast. Well, initially it did. Then we started looking at how quickly we were travelling on the road past markers well known to us (that is, exit this corner at that speed - how fast by the next big tree... that sort of thing) and it didn't seem to be as quick as it should be. Then we did a hand-timed 0-100, which gave figures in the mid sevens. Hmm, definitely down - and stick your fingers in your ears and the car started to feel relatively slow... Noticeably slower, for example, than the VT SS 5.7 that we tested years ago - ["New Car Test - Commodore SS 5.7 V8"]. And then we had an eye-opening incident. On the way to a photo shoot location, Monaro filled with PULP, there was an opportunity to, er, line up the Monaro against my own '98 Lexus LS400. And it was absolutely dead even - nothing in it until about 120 km/h. Nothing at all - not even a car's length either way. Now the fastest magazine times ever quoted for the Lexus are in the low-mid sevens, and my own timing has confirmed that. And here was the 6-speed 5.7-litre Monaro exactly as fast - well, without doing a tyre-warming burn-out, switching off the traction control to do a harder launch with a trace of wheelspin, and so on. But perhaps this Monaro was down in power? We started to think so.
We approached Queensland performance specialist ChipTorque and asked for their opinion. Lachlan Riddel - who has driven dozens of 225, 255 and 300kW Commodores - thought that on the road the power of the Monaro felt about right for a Holden '225'. So then we put it on the dyno to see if the Monaro's power matched what they saw from other Holdens with the same engine. And, at 164kW, it was right in the 'typical' ballpark for these engines on this dyno. In addition, ChipTorque plugged in their technical tools and examined the real-time on-road ignition timing (only 14 degrees of advance at high rpm full load!), knock sensor activity (none), fault codes (none), air/fuel ratios (you can see them on the dyno graph) - and a host of other factors. No problems at all. So we can only assume that this Devil Yellow beast was in fine health: there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. But it's a bit sad when 5.7-litres of six-speed 225kW Monaro muscle car is no faster than a 4-litre V8-powered 209kW auto-trans luxury four-door. And think about this. If the performance of the press car that we had is typical of the breed actually being sold, then in a straight line a Magna VRX will give a CV8 Monaro a real run for its money... Bizarre. Footnote: One possible explanation for the performance of the Monaro can be related to the engine management. Apparently, the amount of ignition timing that the engine management pulls off with increased intake air temps (that is, the intake air temp ignition timing correction table) has gone through a number of iterations in the period that the 5.7 engine has been available. It's been suggested to us that some of the program versions make the car very susceptible to intake air temp variations - and perhaps Queensland's 28-30 degrees Celsius was knocking a lot off the car's on-road performance? The dyno run on the Monaro was performed courtesy of ChipTorque.
|
|