The shame is that in the early 2000's, Holden was the apple of GM's eye. It was the centre for RWD development for the entire GM company. The Statesman in production that time had more rear seat legroom than any other GM product. The Commodores built during that period spawned an incredible range of vehicles. We had short and long wheelbase 4 door sedans, 2 door coupe, 2 door utility, 4 door long wheelbase utility, one tonne cab chassis and a long wheelbase wagon. After a few years, using the same floorpan, a 4WD version of the wagon was released. Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) built their own high performance versions of the short and long wheebase sedans, a 4WD version of the coupe and worked over versions of both 2 and 4 door utilities, including a 4WD LWB utility called the Avalanche. Overall, the range was pretty staggering. Holden had opened up export markets in the Middle East, broke through with the Monaro going to the US as the GTO and also sold in the UK as the Vauxhall Monaro. As you would know, the VE Commdore became the short-lived Pontiac G8, and now the VF is a Chev. During its design phase, it was planned that the VE would become the basis of a range of cars including Buicks and various other GM brands. The only variant that got to production was the Camaro, which was developed (and I think designed) here and is pretty much VE underneath.
We've been very fortunate in this country for some years now that we had a really switched on design and development team that still knew how to build excitement into their cars. It all dies in around eighteen months.