Holden's Surprise In Birthday Cake

Newcastle Herald

Saturday March 8, 2008

Brent Davison

HOLDEN has a milestone 60th anniversary and we get the gift. At least that seemed to be the way of things when the wraps came off the company's Coupe 60 concept at the Melbourne International Motor Show.

Just as it did with the Monaro concept in Sydney some years ago, Holden showed there are plenty of surprises left in life and one of them is a two-door, pillarless coupe based loosely on the Commodore with a bunch of motor racing influences thrown in and a 6.0-litre V8 tuned to run on E85 ethanol-petrol fuel.

The stunning coupe comes complete with leather and suede-trimmed racing bucket seats, flat underbelly and race-style rear diffuser.

Here's the bad bit though, at least for those of us who like our Holden's big and brawny: Coupe 60 will most likely never see the light of day as a production car and was, as its name suggests, built to celebrate the company's 60th year as an Australian manufacturer.

Also having its global launch in Melbourne was Peugeot's 308 station wagon variant, the Touring, which will go on sale here in the third quarter of the year.

Touring will effectively take up where the current 307 Touring leaves off, but increases its appeal with a standard panoramic glass roof and the option of a seven-seat model.

On the Volkswagen stand the word for the day was "Tiguan", the reveal of the company's latest Golf-based car leaving no doubt in anyone's mind that the compact SUV is coming to tackle the likes of RAV4, Honda CR-V, Land Rover's Freelander and Nissan Dualis, to name just a few.

What will we get?

Three engine choices (125-kilowatt and 147-kilowatt petrol and 103-kilowatt diesel), six-speed manual and automatic transmissions, 4Motion all-wheel-drive and a park assist function that steers itself into parking spaces.

Mazda was also into SUVs with its Hakaze concept unveiled in Melbourne, but the real centre of attention on its stand was the limited edition 40th Anniversary RX-8 coupe, built to celebrate 40 years of Mazda rotary engines.

German car maker BMW hit Melbourne with a "top and tail" approach, revealing two new cars at either end of its model spectrum.

At one end, the small 1-Series convertible, a handsome drop-top variant of the 1-Series coupe (itself a derivative of the 1-series hatchback) and due to arrive later this year with 2.0-litre four-cylinder, 2.5-litre and 3.0-litre six-cylinder engines.

At the other end of the scale is the X6, effectively a four-door sports coupe designed for the rugged stuff, an all-wheel-drive managing to blur even more the line between luxury sedan and off-roader, a car that will come here in August with twin-turbo petrol and diesel engines and pricing between $111,000 and $118,000.

As always, Melbourne tossed up a mixture of something for everyone, from the budget buyer to the high-end dreamer.