Holden Commodore SS 2013 new car review

The situation the Commodore SS finds itself in is a conundrum. To all intents and purposes it’s a dinosaur; a heavy, front-engine, rear-wheel-drive V8 that doesn’t pretend that it will go off-road.

Taking a look at the supposedly more highly evolved competition you see entire genera of vehicles like compact SUVs and crossovers – they’re new and trendy. They’re ‘evolved’. We appear to have moved on from the 1980s and people don’t want big four-door sedans.

The Holden will park itself in parallel or right angle parks using Automatic Park Assist. You just need to control the throttle, brake and transmission. If you’re reversing out of a right angle park, the Reverse Traffic Alert warns you if a vehicle is approaching in your blind spots. 

And speaking of blind spots, when you are driving along, the Commodore constantly scans them and warns you using an orange light in each wing mirror if another vehicle might be in a place where you can’t easily see it.

Electronic safety systems include electronic stability control (ESC), anti-lock brakes (ABS), traction control (which is very welcome in the wet), trailer sway control, hill hold control, reversing camera and six airbags. You have to move up to the Redline model to get forward collision alert and lane departure warning.

The quoted fuel economy is 11.5l/100km. I achieved 10.5l/100km on a trip from Auckland city to Hamilton and back, with a little around town and rush hour motorway driving thrown in. If you are driving mostly around the city, Holden quotes 17l/100km, and that’s quite a lot, whereas on the open road it’s fairly easy to keep the economy in the 8s.

In comparison to the 3.6-litre SV6 which we reviewed here the SS crams in a 6-litre V8 and adds a healthy 75kW, boosting power to 260kW with a whopping 517Nm of torque, and that’s the only difference. It arrives with the kind of noise that makes a grown man smile. The slight compromise seems to be that it feels slightly heavier and less agile in the nose, although it’s difficult to tell without doing a back-to-back test.