Stevezb
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2019
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- 5
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- 2
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- Age
- 48
- Location
- manly
- Members Ride
- 2018 zb calais
Hi Everyone, I just wanted to share my experience on purchasing and owning a brand new ZB Calais.
Purchased on the 8th November 2019, it was sold to me from Parramatta Holden as an un-driven demo. I`m not sure what that means by the way!
It`s the 2.0L turbo motor model. Having owned many many commodores over the past 30 years, from a VH to a VZ, I initially dismissed the ZB and never intended considering owning one. That all changed when while on holidays I hired a mid -sized car from Budget and they presented me with a base model ZB. I didn`t know anything about it at the time, except for the fact it was not made in Aus and was possibly front wheel drive.
After driving it for a day, I thought to myself wow this car is really good. Super easy to drive, quiet, smooth, and amazing torque from the engine at low or any speed, as I only had to touch the accelerator lightly for good acceleration. The car was fully loaded with all our holiday gear and 3 of us as well.
For me to be impressed with a cars acceleration it has to be pretty good as my daily driver at the time was a 2015 XR8 with the supercharged 5.0 litre engine.
After driving the ZB on the Gold Coast for a few days, I decided to pop the bonnet and see what was there. I was surprised to find a turbocharged 4 cylinder engine. There was no lag at all, it chirps the tyres off the mark and struggles for grip most the way through first with a light load. Amazing I thought. I then checked the specs of the engine and found that it is a bit of a hottie. Partial sodium filled exhaust valves, twin-scroll turbocharger and air to air intercooler. Rated at 350 nm of torque at 3000 rpm, but it feels strong chirping the wheels right off idle. Wikipedia says its actually 400nm but that would be more than the V6 so they wrote it down to 350nm to keep the V6 as their “flagship engine”. The V6 makes 381NM much later in the rev range.
So before making the purchase of the “Calais turbo” I hired a 2018 RS model with the V6 from Budget, to see how I liked it. My initial thoughts are geez it`s jumpy off the mark. Just a touch and you feel like its giving you half throttle. After the initial unexpected jump in the first couple of hundred revs off idle, it felt pretty normal. It felt like the jump off the mark could be fixed with a tweak of the engine tune. So getting back to the “feeling pretty normal” the low - mid range torque is not really there. This engine needs to be revved for anything more than pussy footing around town. Having said that, it`s a very free spinning engine so you don`t have to try very hard to get there, but it`s nothing like the torque you have at your disposal all of the time like the 2.0 turbo. The turbo keeps on revving out like the V6 but the V6 has more go up higher in the rev range and is more fun when you are giving it some. It really depends what you like, I just wish the four pot came with all wheel drive like the V6. I`m hoping they will in a future model as I believe its available OS.
So all in all it`s not really a commodore, it`s an Opel Insignia badged as a Commodore or a Buick Regal in the U.S. But it is a great car to drive.
So having now owned it for 3 weeks, it has a few issues.
1) slight whine like a “differential noise” between 42 and 48 kms/hour
2) ticking noise at idle
3) start stop not working (hasn`t stopped once yet)
4) At higher speeds has a slight roughness, like a wheel is out of balance.
After alerting the service department at Parramatta Holden, they were more than happy to book it in asap. Only problem was they had no loan cars until early January. I didn`t really want to wait another 5 weeks to have it looked at, so I called Holden Customer Service. After describing the issues they seemed helpful and they said they will get back to me after hopefully approving a rental loan car at their cost. So I`m hoping for good news on that and will keep you all posted. A nice pleasant experience, and my car sorted in one visit would be nice. We will see……
Purchased on the 8th November 2019, it was sold to me from Parramatta Holden as an un-driven demo. I`m not sure what that means by the way!
It`s the 2.0L turbo motor model. Having owned many many commodores over the past 30 years, from a VH to a VZ, I initially dismissed the ZB and never intended considering owning one. That all changed when while on holidays I hired a mid -sized car from Budget and they presented me with a base model ZB. I didn`t know anything about it at the time, except for the fact it was not made in Aus and was possibly front wheel drive.
After driving it for a day, I thought to myself wow this car is really good. Super easy to drive, quiet, smooth, and amazing torque from the engine at low or any speed, as I only had to touch the accelerator lightly for good acceleration. The car was fully loaded with all our holiday gear and 3 of us as well.
For me to be impressed with a cars acceleration it has to be pretty good as my daily driver at the time was a 2015 XR8 with the supercharged 5.0 litre engine.
After driving the ZB on the Gold Coast for a few days, I decided to pop the bonnet and see what was there. I was surprised to find a turbocharged 4 cylinder engine. There was no lag at all, it chirps the tyres off the mark and struggles for grip most the way through first with a light load. Amazing I thought. I then checked the specs of the engine and found that it is a bit of a hottie. Partial sodium filled exhaust valves, twin-scroll turbocharger and air to air intercooler. Rated at 350 nm of torque at 3000 rpm, but it feels strong chirping the wheels right off idle. Wikipedia says its actually 400nm but that would be more than the V6 so they wrote it down to 350nm to keep the V6 as their “flagship engine”. The V6 makes 381NM much later in the rev range.
So before making the purchase of the “Calais turbo” I hired a 2018 RS model with the V6 from Budget, to see how I liked it. My initial thoughts are geez it`s jumpy off the mark. Just a touch and you feel like its giving you half throttle. After the initial unexpected jump in the first couple of hundred revs off idle, it felt pretty normal. It felt like the jump off the mark could be fixed with a tweak of the engine tune. So getting back to the “feeling pretty normal” the low - mid range torque is not really there. This engine needs to be revved for anything more than pussy footing around town. Having said that, it`s a very free spinning engine so you don`t have to try very hard to get there, but it`s nothing like the torque you have at your disposal all of the time like the 2.0 turbo. The turbo keeps on revving out like the V6 but the V6 has more go up higher in the rev range and is more fun when you are giving it some. It really depends what you like, I just wish the four pot came with all wheel drive like the V6. I`m hoping they will in a future model as I believe its available OS.
So all in all it`s not really a commodore, it`s an Opel Insignia badged as a Commodore or a Buick Regal in the U.S. But it is a great car to drive.
So having now owned it for 3 weeks, it has a few issues.
1) slight whine like a “differential noise” between 42 and 48 kms/hour
2) ticking noise at idle
3) start stop not working (hasn`t stopped once yet)
4) At higher speeds has a slight roughness, like a wheel is out of balance.
After alerting the service department at Parramatta Holden, they were more than happy to book it in asap. Only problem was they had no loan cars until early January. I didn`t really want to wait another 5 weeks to have it looked at, so I called Holden Customer Service. After describing the issues they seemed helpful and they said they will get back to me after hopefully approving a rental loan car at their cost. So I`m hoping for good news on that and will keep you all posted. A nice pleasant experience, and my car sorted in one visit would be nice. We will see……
