Right car, wrong time: Holden Commodore ZB and why it was always destined to fail | Opinion

Holden tried its best to put on a brave face. The first Commodore was based on a model from German counterparts, Opel, so surely this new Opel-built ‘ZB Commodore’ carried on the spirit of the badge even if it wasn’t actually bolted together in Australia like every other model before it. Right?

Wrong. It was marketing spin and the public didn’t buy it. Or the ZB Commodore.

As it would turn out, the final car to carry the Commodore badge was actually the writing on the wall for the Holden brand. General Motors big wigs in Detroit didn’t seem to care about the fact that this new Opel-designed model bore no similarity between what came before it.

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Holden was seemingly a far-flung outpost - which had the steering wheels on the wrong side - so it would get the cars it was given and accept them willingly. 

In fact, without the locally-manufactured Commodore, Holden became the only car brand in the world that didn’t actually sell anything that was actually a Holden. Every model in the showrooms started life with a different badge, be it an Opel, Chevrolet or GMC. The catch is, the ZB Commodore wasn’t a bad car. In fact, for what it was - a mid-size, European-focused model - it was actually pretty good.

Originally it was created to become the new Opel Insignia and take on the likes of the Mazda6, Volkswagen Passat and Ford Mondeo. To that end it was available in three Euro-friendly bodystyles - liftback, Sportwagon and Tourer - and featured a front-wheel drive, four-cylinder heavy line-up. A V6-powered, all-wheel drive version was also offered to try and appease those missing the V6, V8 and rear-wheel drive aspects of the Aussie-made Commodores but it wasn’t enough.

General Motors gave up on Holden only two years after the ZB Commodore launched and shut the brand down.

But looking back at the ZB in hindsight, it was arguably the right car even if the timing was wrong. Buyers had already begun abandoning ‘Large Cars’ in favour of SUVs so the writing was on the wall for the likes of the Commodore and Ford Falcon.

Sales of mid-size sedans were modest too, but Holden arguably stood a better chance trying to compete against the Toyota Camry, Mazda6 and Subaru Liberty than it did sticking with the Aussie-made Commodore. And in that context, the Opel Insignia was a good car and held its own against the Camry, 6, Liberty and Passat.

The fact that it carried the Commodore badge seemed to anger more people than it endeared, but it did seem to help the sales. In its only full year on sale in 2019 the ZB Commodore found 5915 buyers, which meant it out-sold the 6 (2612), Skoda Octavia (1814) and Liberty (1344). Only the Camry outperformed it with 16,768 sales.

Would the ZB Commodore have fared better if it was a ‘Holden Insignia’ or something similar? Perhaps. Or maybe Holden would have been better off ditching the rear-wheel-drive Commodore five years earlier and locally-manufacturing a front-wheel drive Camry rival when sales of mid-sizers were booming?

Obviously it doesn’t matter now and the Commodore name is gone forever, just like Holden, but the last model to carry the badge deserved better.