holden commodore group a

GROUP A COMMODORE MUSCLE
First Published:

March 21, 1998
The Age

USED CARS

By The Age's DAVID MORLEY

PETER BROCK'S public split with Holden back in 1987 is well documented and now part of history. But if anything good came out of it, it was that Holden Special Vehicles was born.

Realising that hot-shot Holdens helped move the metal further down the line, Holden joined forces with international motor racing entrepreneur Tom Walkinshaw and established HSV in Melbourne's east.

The Notting Hill factory's first task was to produce HSV's debut model, which would help stimulate passenger car sales as well as form the basis of Holden's attack on the 1988 Touring Car championship.

With that in mind, HSV took a standard Berlina sedan and turned it into a model called the Group A and set the HSV juggernaut on its way - a journey that continues with great success today.

The Group A was interesting from a product point of view, too. To homologate the body kit, Holden Racing Team believed it would need to win touring car races, which meant the Group A had to be fitted with a wild collection of wings and skirts that would radically alter the basic shape of the car.

The bonnet was fitted with a wide, slatted scoop, which drew air from the engine bay and sent it over the windscreen. The front and rear bumpers were dumped in favor of deep, body-colored spoilers while side skirts ran the length of each flank.

To maximise the aerodynamic effects, the skirts and spoilers were very deep, with little ground clearance for crossing gutters and driveways. HSV cleverly designed the skirts and spoilers in two pieces so owners of the road cars could remove the lower section and store it safely. Those who did found the cars much easier to drive; those who didn't usually bashed the lower sections into smithereens inside the first week.

The most contentious body addition was the rear wing. Not content with merely adding a lip to the trailing edge of the boot lid, HSV built a huge, hollow wing that covered the entire boot lid and raised the deck height several centimetres. It helped aerodynamics, sure, but it looked decidedly weird. Throw in details like the C-pillar trims, narrow grille and bigger, five-spoke alloy wheels and it looked purposeful.

Every car was painted in panorama silver (a nod to the annual Bathurst enduro the car was designed to win), which was more ice-blue than silver. Inside, the cars got extra velor trim, full instrumentation and a continuation of the ice-blue theme. A gorgeous Mono steering wheel was fitted along with a leather gear-knob.

A revised suspension resulted in much better handling than with the standard VL Commodore (upon which the car was based), with HSV engineering out the horrendous roll-oversteer of the standard car. It came down to stiffer springs and dampers, but there was plenty of front-end fine-tuning as well.

Under the bonnet, the Group A sported the first version of Holden's fuel-injected five-litre V8 engine. Designed and engineered by HSV, the engine used a twin-throttle body set-up that allowed for good breathing, without sacrificing too much in the way of torque.

Compared with even a 1998 V8 Commodore, the injection set-up was special and endowed the car with 180kW, and torque to match.

It was smooth and felt powerful, but also felt civilised in a way the old carburetted engine never could. A twin-exhaust system, which joined into one pipe at the very rear of the car, gave it a good sound, too.

A five-speed manual transmission was the only fitment and although the clutch was on the heavy side, the shift action of the Borg Warner T5 was actually good.

A limited slip differential helped tame the handling manners of the live rear axle.

Standard equipment ran to air-conditioning, cruise control, central locking, power windows and power mirrors.

On its launch, the Commodore SS Group A (it's much better known as the "Walkinshaw") was not cheap at $45,000, especially when a Calais with a V8 and the lot was in the low $30s.

HSV's change of plan when it came to production numbers didn't help, either. Needing 500 for touring car homologation, the first batch was snapped up fairly quickly. Taking that as a sign of more demand, HSV bumped the production run to 750 and then tried for months to get rid of the remaining 250. That hurt values as some dealers started discounting, and SS Group A used prices were flat for some time.

That's changed now as the cars still on the roads are regaining some of the gee-whizz factor that surrounded them when new. HSV's own fortunes have obviously played a part in that and the strong demand for the current range of cars will help demand for older models.

Good "Walkinshaws" now sell for the mid-$20,000s privately and high-$20,000s from a dealer. As with any Australian muscle car, authenticity is paramount, since a large component of the price is linked to the car's historical significance. We haven't heard of any faked Walkinshaws - unlike GTR-XU1 Toranas, of which there are more in existence now than Holden ever made - but there could be a few getting around. HSV car clubs are the obvious places to start looking for both cars and the necessary knowledge to detect a fraud.

Prices correct at date of publication