It's a shame, the Monaro is one of the few Holden's I like.... I was never a fan of the earlier Monaro's, I always saw them as Kingswood's with the rear doors welded shut, needless to say I wasn't a fan of the Kingswood either. The new Monaro on the other hand did look quite good, it had a decent V8, although it did lack somewhat in performance, and was overall a nice package. I have never been a fan of Holden products, in particular the Commodore, but the Monaro was certainly the exception.
They must be really crap I went to see herbie the love bug movie the other night and he fair shit on the Monaro he was racing. A 1963 beatle can beat it !!! :LOL::LOL::LOL:
My mate has a Monaro and we swapped cars one night It felt like I was in a Commodore but with only 2 doors and a leather interior. Way too much body roll for my liking and I was sitting up far too high. It took me a while to get my Zed back too! We took the cars out for a photo shoot: The full gallery is here Mind you, if you spent $10k on a Monaro for some decent suspension and a supercharger it'd be a different battle.
given the G.M. hype as to how well it sold, you have to wonder why they are ditching it ...???? me smells a wee rat in the system ?????
It all gets down to dollars ... When the (new) Monaro program got off the ground, predictions were to sell about 5000 in Aussie in the first year, and that sales would fall after that. Pretty much true to what happened. The export sales were tasty icing on the cake; the current model pretty much met its expectations if not exceeded them. 2 years ago GM USA planned to use the VE platform for some rwd sedans in the USA, and the next model Monaro was going to be based on that program. GM are not in the best position financially as a global group and a round of cost cutting has seen the USA VE Buick program get the chop. The 4 door VE is still viable for Holden, but the 2 door program really needs the export business to make the bean counters happy. I believe that GM got it wrong by chopping the VE Buick platform, as they opted to leave an additional SUV platform in place. GM USA are being killed in the sedan market at the moment by Toyota/Mazda/Honda, and if fuel prices remain high there could well be a drift away from heavy boxy SUV's in the short term. They may end up regretting not having that Buick platform. One of GM's not-so-great decisions of the last 10 years was to try to add Fiat to their global stable along with Saab, and a percentage of Subaru. If I believe what has been written, GM "invested" a couple of billion US$ building a stake in Fiat; then, when it started going sour for them, I believe it cost them another couple of billion to buy out of the deal. That's about 4 billion $ out of cash flow to for essentially no bottom line or balance sheet bonuses. Personally, I liked the "new" Monaro aesthetically, but have never driven one. I hope that there will be another version in the longer term future - more work for our company!
QLD Number Plates "MNARO" Prestege I have these for sale if anyone knows anyone who might be want these. I need $2500 for them. They have never been on a car and are in original box. Ph: (07) 38431388 or 0411 780 281 to check them out.. Need money for the zed Regards, Stephen Hayes
