What's outside today 44 - Vauxhall VXR8

Tear-stained hankies today when the man from Vauxhall came to take this one away - it's brilliant.


The VXR8 is the successor to the much-loved Vauxhall Monaro, and like the Monaro, it's really an Australian Holden, in this case the sportiest version of the latest Commodore.


This car is aimed at BMW's M cars, Mercedes AMG models, the RS Audis and the 'R' Jaguars but it's a lot cheaper and a lot less intimidating - you can just get in and drive the thing.


Much of the VXR8's appeal derives from this, its 6.0 litre Corvette-derived V8 engine; you might expect this to be a slow-revving, lazy affair, but it's actually quite zingy. The same goes for the automatic transmission fitted to our test car which was a quick-shifting six speeder, rather than a slushy, slurry four-speeder of the sort usually associated with US cars.


I haven't driven any of the less powerful Australian Commodores, but the VXR8 is so good, I wonder whether Vauxhall has considered bringing these cars over as a delayed replacement for the Senators and Omegas that were so popular with users such as the police.

What's outside today 37 - Vauxhall Antara

This is Vauxhall's newish SUV, the Antara. It looks remarkably similar to the Chevrolet Captiva which is hardly surprising given that they are more or less the same car.


Unlike the Captiva we tested for the Verdict last year, this car has a diesel engine, a much better choice for a heavy 4x4.


Where the Antara disappoints a bit, perhaps because it tries a bit too hard, is with its interior; our top-end SE spec test car was fitted with lashings of leather and wood which didn't quite come off - looked a bit over the top IMHO. I suspect the less expensive versions may actually have nicer interiors.


The Antara isn't bad to drive though - flat, fairly car-like handling and a high driving position make for a relaxing drive on long journeys.

UK car production on the up

According to the SMMT, UK vehicle production was up 2.1% at the end of September on a year-to-date basis, at 1.29 million.

This means full year production is likely to be not far off the highs achieved in the early Seventies and then again in the first few years of this decade. Thats a remarkable achievement considering that the last few years have seen the closure of Peugeot's plant at Ryton, Vauxhall's Luton works, and the final car assembly end of Ford's Dagenham operation - not to mention the demise of MG Rover.

It is a little remarked upon fact that Britain has lost almost an entire car industry in the last twenty or so years but gained almost an entire new one as well. The old 'Big Four' volume manufacturers - Leyland, Ford, Chrysler/Rootes and Vauxhall, have with the exception of Vauxhall largely disappeared in terms of UK production. What we have in their place are new Japanese plants run by Honda, Toyota and Nissan, as well as revived, previously niche-bound but now massively expanded prestige operations such as Bentley, Aston, Rolls, Land Rover and MINI - only Jaguar isn't really living up to its potential, and even that may change once the new XF hits the market.

One by-product of this shift is that not only is the industry almost as big as it's ever been, but the average value of the cars being made is probably a lot higher. Notwithstanding the possible rationalisation of Land Rover's and Jaguar's production facilities after Ford has sold these off, I think we will now hold on to most of what is left of the British industry.

What's outside today 15 - Saab 93 BioPower

This is the BioPower version of the Saab 93. That means it can run either on normal unleaded or E85, a mix of 85% bioethanol and 15% unleaded. Externally, it's more or less indistinguishable from the standard model - apart, that is, from the enormous BioPower stickers attached to the sides of this test example.


Yesterday, I took it out on one of my favourite test routes - setting out from Cambridgshire to Norwich on the A11 before heading north to Cromer on the North Norfolk coast and than back home via Cley, Fakenham and Swaffham.

All jolly agreeable, and a route that allowed me to take in a stop-off at a Morrison E85 pump for a quick top-up - the one at the Norwich store, which lies within the shadow of the Carrow Road football ground, in fact.


Got back home in a good mood late in the evening, my head full of moderately warm thoughts towards the comfy, inoffensive if rather bare Saab. Made a cup of tea and casually picked up my copy of the delivery note for the 93 in order to take a closer look at it. What followed was the worst case of what Americans call 'sticker shock' I've had in connection with a Verdict test car since Ford sent us an admittedly very impressive Focus diesel estate about two years ago that had been specced up to the eyeballs for an on the road price of about 25 grand. The Saab - which I should, in fairness, mention is the priciest Vector Sport variant fitted with a few options like metallic paint - comes out at a scarcely believable GBP28,000.


I've always had a soft spot for Saabs and I'm a strong supporter of what the company is doing in promoting E85 with its BioPower models. But that price seems to be hopelessly ambitious to me. Remember that a Skoda Octavia is probably at least as well built as a Saab and, despite being Golf-based, is probably as roomy (in particular where luggage, as opposed to passenger space is concerned) as a 93. But Octavia prices start at about 11 grand; the deeply impressive and very rapid vRS estate version costs about GBP18,500.

Some other yardsticks - Mercedes C Class prices start at GBP23 thousand, BMW 3 Series prices at less than GBP21 thousand. And the Vauxhall Vectra estate starts at less than GBP16K - that's relevant because, as General Motors products, the 93 and the Vectra have quite a lot in common under the skin.

VXR8 update

Tried to get a booking for the Vauxhall VXR8 (Holden Monaro successor) this week - nothing doing at the moment, unfortunately! Not surprising, though, given that this must be the car everyone wants to get their hands on this summer.

Wheelwobble wallflowers 2 - Cadillac BLS

The Swedish theme continues with Cadillac's slow-selling baby model. A couple of days ago, when I was discussing the Ursaab, I issued the usual cheap shot about Saabs being reskinned Opels or Vauxhalls. The BLS is, if anything, a re-reskin because despite its all-American looks, it's based on Saab's 9-3 and is, in fact, built at Trollhattan on the same production line.


I've always found the BLS's styling and soft, understated character fairly appealing, but like a lot of stuff that's OK rather than startlingly good this car has struggled for attention in the UK. I think only a few dozen have been sold since it was launched last year. Not having a German badge is a real handicap these days, although I suspect that the BLS's pricing was probably a bit too ambitious as well. A pity, as the BLS is nothing like as ropey an effort as the 1981 J-Car based Cimarron, Cadillac's previous go at producing a posh small (by its standards) car via platform sharing.

Anyway, it looks as though Cadillac has not been put off because an estate version appears to be in the offing, although I don't know whether that will make it to the UK.

Blast from the past 7 - 'Ursaab'

Just getting ready to go to Sweden tomorrow, and this has put me in a Swedish sort of mood.

So here's the most Swedish of cars, the so-called 'Ursaab' of 1946. I think the prefix 'Ur' plays the same role in Swedish as it does in German; it's difficult to translate but in German, at least, it usually denotes that anything to which it is applied is very old, or a true original. That contraption that looks like a park bench with bicycle wheels that Mercedes claims was the first proper car, for example, is sometimes called the 'Ur-Benz'.

Anyway - back to the Ursaab. Project 92 was the first Saab passenger car and was developed over the years into the 93, 95 and 96 lines, which only finally bowed out in 1980.


Nobody could accuse this Saab of being a re-skinned Vauxhall - in those days, the design teams leant on Saab's aircraft experts for ideas rather than Opel, a fact that shows in the remarkable purity of the Ursaab's sleek bodywork. But let's not be too harsh on today's models for their part-sharing; Saab was always a small company before it was taken over by GM, and despite its distinctive identity, it often relied on links with other manufacturers to keep going. In 1966, when the two-stroke engine fitted to the 95 and 96 needed to be replaced, Saab bought in a V4 four-stroke from the German end of Ford. A little later, it asked Triumph to design the overhead-cam engine for the 99; this power unit, related to that fitted to the Dolomite, survived in heavily developed form until comparatively recently. And in the 1980s, the 9000 was the result of a joint development effort that also produced the Fiat Croma, Alfa 164 and Lancia Thema.

So Saabs have never really been quite the pure thoroughbreds some of us might like to imagine - but it would still be nice if they could recover a bit more of their former individuality.

Vauxhall VXR8 - one I didn't drive!

The exciting new Vauxhall VXR8 at SMMT test day at Millbrook - unfortunately only as a static display. This is a Holden really, and the nearest thing there is to a successor to the marvellous Monaro.


The lady who does the press car bookings at Vauxhall is going to be very popular all summer as everyone tries to get their hands on this one. I'd better join the queue.

Definitions 2 - stonking

Looks like a verb ('to stonk'?) but in practice it seems to be an adjective.

Invented a few years ago by motoring journalists because no existing word adequately captured the testosterone-charged character of the Vauxhall (Holden) Monaro.

Actually, I just made that up, although I think you'll agree that it does sound fairly plausible...

Definitions 1 - CHUBAR

That's right - not FUBAR, but CHUBAR. And it's nothing to do with granola-style snack products either.

CHUBAR = CHavved Up Beyond All Recognition

Description of a car that has been so heavily modified with dodgy spoilers and so on that it is hard or even impossible to tell what model it was to start off with.

Not quite sure why this one occurred to me during a week when I have been testing two extravagantly body-kitted Vauxhalls but there we are.

What's outside today 4 - Vauxhall Corsa VXR and Vectra VXR

Today, a nice pair of Vauxhalls. Of course, it might have been more interesting to show a picture of, say, a pair of Bristols, but given that Bristol is a small manufacturer, I think it's quite difficult to get even a single test car out of them, let alone two at the same time.

Anyway, these aren't just any old Vauxhalls - they are the top-of-the range sporty VXR versions of the Corsa and the Vectra. Which reminds me that the last VXR-badged Vauxhall we had on the Verdict was the much-missed muscley Monaro, although that was really a Holden. Hoping for an opportunity to try its successor, the four-door VXR8, soon. I notice this had a rave review in Autocar this week, which has only whetted my appetite further.

A busy weekend ahead - off to Berkshire on Saturday with the Corsa and then the northwest with the Vectra on Sunday.