Still more talk about the next Holden Commodore

The word on the street is that GM’s new Cadillac CT5 sedan has arrived in Australia and could be rebadged as the potential replacement for the Holden Commodore, check out the photo below.

Surely the Opel badged Commodore must now be in question after the PSA Group purchased GM’s Opel operations in 2018. GM’s Cadillac CT5 comes as a luxury model in rear wheel or all-wheel drive modes.

This model is being talked about as being a logical replacement for the rebadged Opel Insignia. GM did have plans back in 2008 to introduce the Cadillac to Australia and New Zealand but pulled out at the last minute once the GFC (global financial crisis) hit the car companies. We all remember Barak Obama’s ball out of General Motors back in 2009.

We have read a couple of reports in on-line automotive news articles that Holden has been testing the Cadillac CT5 sedan near its Lang Lang proving ground in Victoria.

Holden replied very quickly that they are regularly involved in emissions and transmission calibration work for the GM vehicle portfolio, that could be a cover up story, who knows?

GM has not confirmed officially if they will introduce the Cadillac to our market, the main consideration they face is the left/right hand drive issue. To build a right-hand drive model you have to consider entering all the right-hand drive markets like, Japan, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, so GM will need to look closely at those regions well before Australia and NZ.

The Cadillac CT5 is the replacement for the previous CTS model, equipped with a 177kW 2.0L 4-cylinder turbo with a 10-speed automatic transmission, rear-wheel drive.

There is a more powerful version with a 3.0L twin-turbo V6 developing between 250kW and 265kW of power that is badged as a CT5-V (see the photo above), this could be a worthy replacement for Commodore’s performance model with the 3.6L V6 that produces 235kW.

The challenge for the people at Holden will be to come up a replacement for the Commodore when the PSA Group is rumoured to move the Insignia name to their own platform in 2021.

Sept 2019