HOLDEN DUMPS MONARO
By John Carey and Chris Gable
It's official: Holden has announced that it will dump the Monaro. The car-maker has said that production of the Monaro at its Elizabeth assembly plant in South Australia will stop at the end of this year.
Final cars made will be a limited-edition specification, to be called CV8-Z.
Holden spokesman Jason Laird would not comment on whether the cessation of Monaro production also meant the end of the line for the left-hand drive Pontiac GTO that's exported to the USA. "It's up to Pontiac to make any announcement regarding the future of the GTO," he said.
Holden's American-born boss, Denny Mooney, has revealed in recent interviews that he's keen to reduce manufacturing complexity that the Elizabeth assembly plant has to cope with as it produces Commodore (in both right- and left-hand drive), Statesman/Caprice (again, in both right- and left-hand drive), Adventra, Crewman (in rear- and all-wheel-drive), Ute, One-Tonner (in RWD and AWD), as well as the Monaro (in right- and left-hand drive, and with two different V8 engines).
The death of Monaro could be just the first step of a manufacturing rationalisation program as Holden gets ready for the all-new VE Commodore and WM Statesman/Caprice models, which will be launched in July, August or maybe even September next year.
In a press release, Denny Mooney said Holden "... continued to investigate options for a next generation coupe with other divisions of General Motors".
"Everyone at Holden is certainly committed to delivering a new generation Monaro in the future but there is still a lot of work to make that happen," he said. "We're looking at a number of options to ensure Holden continues to set the standard when it comes to performance coupes in the future.
"Monaro means too much to Holden to not have another Monaro at some time in the future."
The end-of-the-road CV8-Z Monaro gets a new orange-based metallic colour called Fusion and factory-fitted Holden By Design sunroof, black bonnet scoop accents, machined 18-inch five-spoke alloys -- with one spoke embossed with a CV8-Z logo -- modified rear lights and gun metal chrome CV8-Z rear badge.
Inside, Fusion and Phantom cars come with Fusion-coloured instrument and highlighted leather trim. Three other combinations will be offered: Quicksilver, Turismo and Devil Yellow with anthracite leather trim.
The CV8-Z carries the same $60,490 recommended retail price as the standard VZ Monaro CV8 and goes on sale early next month. Planned production is 1200 cars only.
