Pulled from here.

Commodore in race for US market
By Joshua Dowling, Los Angeles
The Sun-Herald
Monday January 6 2003

The home-grown Holden Commodore could follow the Monaro to the US as part of the push by the car maker to become a major global force.
Just hours after the Monaro was unveiled as a Pontiac GTO at the Los Angeles Motor Show, General Motors vice-chairman of product development Bob Lutz said the next generation Commodore range, due in 2006, could join the Monaro -- but only if it was built in the US.

He said General Motors was looking into the feasibility of duplicating the tools required to build the next Commodore -- and assembling various models, including the ute and the luxury Statesman, in America.

"The whole line of Holdens could be produced in the United States," Mr Lutz said.

"We are at an early stage of investigating working with Holden to let them engineer the successor to the current Holden rear-wheel-drive architecture and then work with us to ensure all US safety and all US requirements are taken into account."

Building the Commodore in America would allow General Motors to overcome the 25 percent tariff on imported vehicles.

 

Good deal!

Looks like our man Bob is really trying to turn things around in a big way...

 

I know I'm going to sound like one of those kids we used to love to beat up in school, but... I told ya so!

The next VE is being engineered to be sold in the US either as a Holden, or as the basis for GM's "volume sigma" which will spawn a new GTO, Pontiac sedan, and very likely a Chevrolet sports sedan and quite possibly the next Camaro as well.

I'm not a GM insider, but Holden has been pretty open about the fact it's working on cars for North America, and has been for at least the past year or two.

 

What I don't understand about this entire situation is how GM's Austailian Holden division can accomplish building these RWD platform cars on their own, yet GM North America is seemingly incapable of doing so on their own... WHY?!

 

I've been wondering that 1 for a long time now.

So you say LOL.

 

Do you think it would better to keep the Holden cars in one Nth American brand or spread them over Pontiac/Chevrolet etc?

 

the latter

 

It's just that Holden took the 'V' car and developed it over the years at a time GM/NA was running with FWD 'W' cars. GM had no intention of making RWD cars beyond Cadillac & Corvette till about over a year or so ago. Since Holden has to develop (actually, more like evolve) a chassis to accept Sigma componets anyways, and GM is going to want these cars in a hurry, why not let Holden lead while working with GM/NA, and get RWD out a few years earlier?

Cadillac has something like a lock on the CTS/STS Sigma chassis for their line, so the alternative is for GM to develop a separate Sigma RWD chassis for NA cars. Something GM isn't prone to do when they can get it cheaply in another way.

 

as long as we get them i don't care what they are called.

 

lots more info here

guionM has been spot on.

 

We are at an early stage of investigating working with Holden to let them engineer the successor to the current Holden
rear-wheel-drive architecture and then work with us to ensure all
US safety and all US requirements are taken into account."




I really hope he meant Canadian regulations too!
Like 5mph bumpers. Were getting screwed already with NO GTO.

 

so true.