Today's AutoTechDaily has a story regarding ZF expanding its tech center in Northville (Detroit suburb). The interesting section of the story speaks to ZF's new facility it is building in Adelaide, Australia. They say the plant is for chassis components it will be supplying for a new platform at Holden. They say the plant will begin pilot operations this summer with production to begin early next year! Isn't this a little earlier than we were thinking on here?

Also, has any information been released (purposefully or not) on exactly which models will be built in Australia? If Holden is going to be starting production early next year, I would expect to see some unveilings late in the autoshow season. What do you guys think?

 

Anyone else want to take an Autralian summer vacation now.

 

Any details on what sort of chassis components?

Also, it looks like no coupes will be built in Australia.

 

None listed. The article says that the Northville tech center was used to support chassis development for this architecture. My guess is that ZF is the chassis "systems integrator" and also provides quite a few of the components. That is only an educated guess on my part though.

 

I would think also that if a chassis component manufacturer starts production, the platform/vehicle those components are for will have some sort of lead time...6 months maybe? Maybe more if they're talking about production of parts for preproduction test cars.

 

It has been known for a while that Holden expect to release the VE Commy in April/May 2006.