Here’s A Tour Of Holdens And GM Imports In An Aussie Junkyard

You can learn a lot about cars and society by driving around and seeing what’s on the roads. Like cutting into a tree and counting the rings, you can also learn a lot about automotive history by seeing what ends up in the junkyards. After my enjoyable jaunt talking about old Fords, I decided to head back out so I could show you all the other side of Australian car culture. That’s right, we’re talking Holdens, baby.

There’s plenty to relate to for the Americans and Europeans out there. Sure, there’s nothing more Australian than football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars. But Holden was a General Motors company through and through, and it succeeded (and suffered!) for that connection just as other global subsidiaries like Opel, Vauxhall and Daewoo. So, let’s dive in and see what’s what!

As you might expect, Commodores abound as Holden’s typical bestseller Down Under. As a generalist junkyard, most of the cars here are from the 1990s onwards, with much of the earlier cars having been stripped to the bare metal and crushed long ago. There’s actually quite a good mix of foreign and domestic-built content here. Some of it you might find familiar, some of it you might find totally alien!

Right off the bat, you’re gonna wanna know about utes, right? Well, I started off standing right next to one! As you can see in the video thumbnail, it’s got those rectangular black door handles and an Ecotec badge under the indicator. That means this is a VS Commodore built from 1995 to 1997, and on to 2000 for the ute models. Ecotec refers to the 3.8-liter V6 which Americans are more familiar with as the Buick 3800.

Holden had a long and storied history with the Buick V6 engine. The engine’s American lineage dates back all the way to the 1961 Fireball V6, but the Australians came to it much later. The LN3 engine debuted in the 1988 Commodore VN Series, when the car went from mid-sized to full-size. It replaced the RB30 from the Nissan Skyline R31 that was used in the Commodore VL. Later variants stuck around until 2004 in the Commodore VY. The engine is instantly recognizable by its distinctive simple valve covers and high-mount alternator. The 2004 VZ model would then introduce the Alloytec V6, also known as GM’s High Feature engine.

There was one older gem in the yard, though, which I never expected to see. It was a 1984 Commodore —a VH — looking splendid in green. Sadly, it had seen better days, and naught but the most serious restoration could save it. This isn’t the kind of junkyard that Roadkill visits for a laugh, though. This is a junkyard where near-worthless cars come to give up their last parts before their final date with the crusher.

Indeed, that’s why it was so odd to see a VH Commodore here. Typically, cars rarely sit in these yards for more than a year or two before they have no more useful parts left. The shells are then typically discarded. A VH Commodore, even in poor condition, is now so old that its parts and body shell are actually ticking up in value again. The idea that someone sold it to this yard for a few hundred bucks is odd. In any case, I really appreciated it, and noted the Holden straight-six Blue motor and its cute little two-barrel carby manifold.

Just like Ford, Holden was big into wagons. The Commodore was always available as one, with a big ol’ caboose out the back.  That was probably most obvious on the VT and VX, like this example seen below, with a truly cavernous amount of storage in the back. You could even get a seven-seat version, though access to the rear seats was, if I remember correctly, through the trunk. I got to sit in one back in 2000 on a playdate to Joshua’s house. Josh, I hope wherever you ended up, you’re doing well. I’m sorry that game I gave you didn’t work, I thought your mum’s computer would have WinZIP already installed.

Holden would stick with big booty wagons right to the end of local Commodore production. However, the VF model did see a bit of a shrinking of the rear end, visually and otherwise. It made it look sportier to the detriment of how much stuff you could stick in the back. It’s hard to say whether it helped sales any, as the Commodore was well on its way out the door at this point.

If you wanted a Holden wagon but couldn’t afford a Commodore, there was another option. The Apollo! Does it look strange to you? That’s because it’s actually kind of a Toyota Camry. It was a part of a weird government plan to encourage domestic and foreign brands to swap models and rebadge them. The idea was to encourage globalism as the country cut import tariffs. Under the Button plan, the government wanted local companies to cut the number of models in production and rationalize their lineups by sharing.

Holden and Toyota teamed up as a part of this push under the banner United Australian Automobile Industries. Toyota got a VN Commodore and called it a Lexcen, while Holden got the Camry and called it the Apollo. It also got the Corolla with some distinctive tail lights and called it the Nova, which actually looked pretty good. It gave Holden some decent small cars, and Toyota a larger rear-wheel-drive model it didn’t really need. The arrangement eventually petered out, with customers seeing through the whole rebadge job pretty transparently anyway.

On the small car front, Holden was always scraping the pantry for cars. There was the Holden Cruze, which was at times a Suzuki and at other times a Chevy. In fact, in the latter case, it was one of the few times Holden built its own small car in Australia. However, the rest of Holdens small cars were all imported in its last few decades. The Holden Barina was a Suzuki Cultus, then an Opel Corsa, then it was built by Daewoo. Opel also provided the Astra and Vectra, along with the Holden Zafira minivan.

Holden wasn’t afraid to color outside the lines, either. It even brought in the van version of the Opel Corsa as the Holden Combo. It offered a cavernous rear cargo bay with a cute little Barina (Corsa) front end, with the fuel-sipping benefits of a 1.4-liter engine. Unfortunately, one suspects heavy payloads were often too much for the little donk. A friend had one and it was an absolute mess of a thing, sadly.

The imports bulked out Holden’s range, but they generally didn’t connect with the punters. As the Commodore grew too expensive for the average Australian, they looked to hatchbacks and smaller cars. Sadly, Holden never really measured up in these segments. It had always suffered there since the Gemini became old hat in the 1980s.

With local manufacturing considered too expensive, and pointless given the locally-built Commodore was no longer selling, GM killed the Australian plants in 2017. Just a few short years later, the brand itself was put down. There was nothing else for it; to the Aussies, a Holden built overseas was never really a Holden at all. It’s a sad tale, but it’s the one the government and GM wrote for us.

With Ford gone, and Holden dead, the grand temple of Australian car culture crumbled into dust. It still breaks me up every time I think about it.

Image credits: Lewin Day, Holden