The all-new Red Bull Holden Racing Team Commodore Supercar was revealed yesterday on Sydney Harbour… on a floating barge.
WHILE SYDNEY SWELTERED, the covers were whipped off the all-new Red Bull Holden Racing Team Commodore Supercar with reigning Supercar champ, Jamie Whincup calling the day “a very big deal”. Fellow Red Bull HRT driver Shane van Gisbergen was also on hand.
“In my world, I consider today a very big deal. We’re not only showing our supporters our 2018 livery, we’re unveiling the new-look, next-generation Commodore supercar. It’s pretty special to be able to do that in this incredible setting,” Whincup said.
“We’ve decided to really change it up with the colour scheme this year, which looks awesome on the new body shape. We’re obviously hoping it’s a rocket, but I guess we’ll find out in Adelaide in just a few weeks’ time.”
With this all-new Commodore’s predecessor becoming the most successful touring car in Australian motorsport, there’s a huge amount of pressure on this new Commodore, which is an Opel Insignia under the skin – you can read our Paul Horrell’s review here.
A big deal was made about the car’s colour scheme. The new livery design is the work of General Motors Holden design manager Peter Hughes, who describes it as “fresh, daring and definitely different”.
“The next generation livery is dominated by a completely dark blue front, fading to completely white rear and should be unmistakable on track. Graphics front and rear have been kept to a minimum, showcasing and highlighting the elegant lines of the new Commodore,” Hughes said.
“I feel it’s a great way to celebrate the entry of a new era of Commodore into Australian motorsport and I hope the fans like the new look.”
And, if there was any doubt about Holden’s commitment to Supercars, Holden’s sponsorship boss Emma Pinwill said, “Holden remains committed to being a leader in motorsport in this country and engaging with the legion of our fans who have supported Holden, Holden racing teams and our racing heritage..
“Today confirms Holden’s commitment to Australian motorsport and we are excited to continue our partnership with Triple Eight Race Engineering and look forward to seeing the striking new Red Bull Holden Racing Team Commodore supercar on top of the podium in 2018.”
The Red Bull Holden next-gen supercars will make their competitive debut when the 2018 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship kicks off with the Adelaide 500, 1-4 March.
Will the public take to a fake Ford/Holden rivalry the way they have to the Falcon/Commodore duels? I’ve lost interest already.
Theres going to be no Mustang in 2019, so they might as well call it the Commodore Cup, like u lost interest.
I always said I’d take an interest in the V8 RWD Nissan V8SC when Nissan starts selling V8 RWD Altimas.
The same appllies for the Commode. I will take an interest in the ZB Commode as a replacement for my current car when GMH makes it a V8 RWD … like the race car they want to use to promote the ZB.
When a V8SC mockup complete with 5 nuts per wheel is able to sucker people in to believing its a Bathurst car then I guess we’ll have marketing gurus trying to use V8 RWD track cars to promote V6 FWD street cars???
I wish GM had released the Camaro here with factory RHD before it pulled the plug on the V8 SS VF. Then we could get behind Camaro track cars (hopefully very close in spec to our street Camaros). And Ford could compete with its Mustang. And the parity documents? Let’s hope their absorbent enough to double as dunny paper.
If they bought the Nissan GT-R Skyline and Ford has the Mustang and Holden/Chev with the Camaro that would be better racing plus it would gain more international investors.
Glenn. I’d factor OUT the GT-R. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE the car and I love to see it blow away cars that cost 3 or 4 times as much at the Bathurst 12 Hour.
Why not race it against the Camaro and the Mustang? It’d win every race making racing Formular GT-R – nobody would drive anything less. Invite Nissan to run the 370Z against the Camaro and the Mustang! Let Nissan add a supercharger to the valley of the roadgoing V6 if it’s needed to compete on the track! And that’s EXACTLY why we need to see street cars on our tracks. The car makers are forced to improve our street cars to gain track success.
I thought GT-R as that’s Nissan hero car, I really didn’t think about 370Z but it’s a good point u make👍
Glenn.
I am most interested in seeing the cars I can afford race against each other. And I dont think that V8 Supercars has anything to do with street cars.
So yes let’s hope to see the Mustang and Camaro on race tracks but not with race mechanicals mounted to spaceframe skeletons with factory panels tacked on for dress up purposes.
I wish we could go back to the street car formula with very little modification. Limit what can race with a $ cut off. Maybe $80k showroom price. Let the GT-R race if it comes in under $80k ; – ) And we’ll all race down to Nissan and buy two.
How long will the ZB be around? Only a few years? If that’s the case all the more resson to campaign with the Camaro if its a longer term prospect.
Is there any way I’d look at a non V8 ZB as a street car? Yes. If it was RWD and had a turbo 6 and matched the Kia Stinger for value and GMH matched Kia for customer care. Kia has a 7 year warranty.
GMH. How quickly can you get a factory RHD V8 Camaro into Australia for a price similar to the Mustang and Stinger?
Which begs the question. “Why have a huge old car that’s not made any more?” Additionally, why not face up to reality & (if this kind of racing is to continue), either choose SUV’s or C Size ‘small cars’ as representative of what in 2018, “dad, mum & the kids now call ‘Their Ride'”. On the other hand, why not just go one step further & go anonymously into any dealer in Australia and (by ‘lot’ i.e. picking a marble from a bag – each marble representing a make and model, that’d be say well north of 100 makes/models on sale in Oz.) Then race them in category eg. based on price, intended purpose, & so on. NO MODS at all! Just race the blessed things & see who wins. Handicaps could include:- Expensive cars could be raced on ‘Price’. Or, ‘fit for Purpose 4X4’ vehicles could do all terrain races. The cheap & cheerful end of the market would be required to do lots of stop, start stuff, with only the occasional freeway type run. I’m sure this could be worked out and TV would benefit from owners of ALL cars, big, small & so on, by the hilarity of it all. This so called ‘v8supercar’ fiasco should end. But it’s like asking America’s ‘Deep’ South to give up NASCAR, in which, effectively, fibreglass copies of long dead gargantuan monoliths are side weighted just so they can run round & round ‘glorified showground or trotting tracks’. All so pointless. But the masses love it or are thought to…. recent research shows apart from a few ‘heartland states’, this circus is irrelevant to most of our US cousins. Finally, these old ‘faux’ racing competitions persist because, it’s a bit like politics – common sense just doesn’t enter into it. On voting day voters aren’t knocked back because they have (half the population) a lower than average IQ.. No. It’s open to all. That’s democracy and why why ‘dills’ can have an affinity to stupid ‘sports’ (not really sports but you know what I mean) such as these outdated kinds of smoky ‘clunker’ noisy, ‘redneck’ ‘chickbanger’ (okay, I didn’t mean you but some other misguided followers of ‘pretend’) ‘motor sport’. [You can forget all of what I’ve said, ’cause, as my old Dad would say. “Nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence or commonsense of the population.”]
And the Commodore can not be bought with a V8. So it is no comparison to the Street car. That is why the Nissan didnt take off, you cant buy one, same as the Volvo. Merc to expensive. V8 Supercars is dead or it just becomes Mustang and Camaro. So may as well rebrand it as Supercars and let all comers race the best and fastest car in the lineup they have. At least that will then be cars we can buy.