Right. I figured that the Crown Vic/Town Car will be on a lengthened Ford 500 chassis.

I'll be very [pleasantly] surprised if it's anything other than an extended 500. Ford doesn't seem interested in anything other than plain sedans, though that could just be posturing given their current product offerings.

 

You mean to say that cabbies and cops will be driving FWD Crown Vics? Wow.

 

To be honest with you, i care more about the turbo 4.0 than i do the v8, but the 5.4 Dohc seems to be the more realistic engine to be offered here stateside . I really like the turbo 4.0 dohc.

It is a screamer. Here's an article on one making 10035hp and it made that running on 98ron which i think is comparable to our 93octane. Boost is 23psi which isn't too high. These engines are very potent. I would love to see something like this in a SE mustang (non-SVT) and perhaps an SVT version of 500 or Fusion/Futura or their lincoln varients. I think this would be an excellent engine if Mercury were to get a Mustang sister car.
http://www.autospeed.com/cms/A_2311/article.html

Boy, Ford and GM sure know how to keep the best stuff elsewhere.

 

... Nothing, except US union pressure on GM. Which, as you know, was always a more significant issue anyway. Same reason holden can't give you another caprice.
what it will mean, to holden at least, is that australia will have access to mid-sized SUVs, which it hasn't had since the isuzu jackaroo/trooper stopped coming here. it's been belted in market share because that's the boom australian segment, and it doesn't have a player.
essentially, if it can get a stopgap SUV or two out of the states (and they're not of sufficient quality to be long-term solutions), it'll take the pressure off Commodore (and Commodore-based) volumes to maintain market share (against toyota, ford etc). when it does that, it can make more ROI and profit/unit on V-cars... And i don't have to point out the implications for that.

 

You're 100% correct about not getting the Caprice. Unions here would see it as moving production overseas because the Caprice would be much like other cars GM is producing here (minus RWD) so the unions would howl about that.

The Holden UTE is an entirely different story, however. The volume would be extremly low (perhaps half of the GTO); it can't be construed as replacing anything since there's nothing here like it; and finally, since GM would be exporting far more trucks to Australia than UTEs coming into the US, the unions would think it's a great deal for them.

Add to the mix that UTEs are running the equivalent of $23-25,000 in Oz, there is the potential for even more generous profit margins than the GTO is giving GM. I can easily see a $23,000US Holden UTE selling as a $29,000 very rare 2006 Chevrolet El Camino.