The brand-new Opel Insignia might be a great Buick, but it's a sad Holden Commodore

The brand-new Opel Insignia might be a great Buick, but it's a sad Holden Commodore

Otomotif News - Since the first shootings of the uncovered Opel Insignia thumped our inboxes, we've been filled with excitement for the brand-new sedan. It looks great, it should come to America with little to no visual changes as the Buick Regal, and we might even get a wagon form. Unfortunately, there's a extend ordering to this silver-tongued shadow, and it comes to us from Down Under.

You see, the Opel Insignia is also undergoing a re-badging chore in Australia to become the brand-new Holden Commodore. It's replacing the beloved rear-drive Commodore( with an optional V8 and ultra-high performance HSV discrepancies) with a front-drive-based pulpit offering four- or six-cylinder devices. This is depressing word considering the Zeta-platform underpinning the Commodore VF spawned the Pontiac G8, Chevrolet SS, and fifth-generation Camaro. Knowing this was going to happen doesn't help much either. What meets everything there is worse is that the brand-new Commodore doesn't have a shred of peculiar styling in the bodywork.

That's not an exaggeration. A brand-new grille with a Holden lion badge instead of an Opel lightning bolt badge is the only change. Look for yourself in the Insignia gallery below. Not only did GM erase a peculiar Australian simulation, it didn't even admit the firebrand to give the car a distinct determine. It's sort of like when Ford planned to supplant the Mustang with the Mazda-derived Probe. The Probe wasn't that bad for the time, but it was no Mustang. At least in that case the Mustang survived.

Before we get ourselves too down, we should mention that there are reasonableness to be hopeful for the future. For one thing, the brand-new all-wheel-drive Commodore/ Insignias will come with a form of the GKN-developed rear differential may be in the Focus RS and Range Rover Evoque, which is pretty neat on its own. And Opel/ Vauxhall have always had wild rendition versions of the Insignia and its Vectra predecessor. The last-place one determined 325 -horsepower and had all-wheel-drive. A brand-new one would likely induce much more, since one of the accessible V6s meets 308 horsepower. Then imagine all of that extra hypothetical horsepower hooked up to the all-wheel-drive organisation that innovated us to " wander state ."

Not only that, but rear-drive Holdens may not be altogether dead yet. A Belgian man announced his intention to buy an old-time Holden factory along with the tooling and titles for the car formerly it was discontinued. His scheme is to continue creating the old-time model after Holden is done with it. Speaking of which, according to The Motor Report , the Commodore, and its big Caprice counterpart will disappear when their factory is shut down in 2017. This wants the Chevrolet Caprice and SS will follow suit unless GM decides to create a replacement built somewhere else, though its hard to see why GM would. At the very least Holden will send the traditional Commodore out in style. A Holden Special Vehicles model with an amazing performance version with a supercharged LS device is rumored to be on the way for the end of production.

To sum up, be happy that the brand-new Insignia is a sharp-worded searching automobile. But be sure to remember and acknowledge the Commodore we're losing. It gave us a lot, and we hope that its gift persists, be it in resumption simulates, or a brand-new, rear-drive, full-size GM sedan.

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Source      : Autoblog.com