GM’s New Global Car to Wear Commodore Badge in Oz

General Motors, bowing to public sentiment, announces its next-generation global large car will continue to be badged as the Commodore in Australia, no matter what it’s called elsewhere.

GM Holden says direct customer feedback drove its decision to retain the Commodore nameplate when imports from GM’s global operations begin in 2018, after the Australian manufacturing plant is shuttered and domestic production ends.

“The next-generation large car we have selected from GM’s global portfolio is worthy of the iconic Commodore nameplate,” GM Holden Executive Director of Sales Peter Keley says in a statement. “When it arrives in 2018, our new large car will honor Commodore’s heritage and support a long and successful future for GM Holden in Australia and New Zealand.

“GM Holden and Commodore aren’t going anywhere. They will remain pillars of Australian motoring for many years to come.”

Keley says customer response confirms that retaining the Commodore nameplate is the right decision for GM Holden.

“Through the process of selecting the vehicle, we put to customers a number of possible criteria to better understand what they felt was important for the car to be competitive in the Australian market,” he says. “Ultimately, the overwhelming response from customers was that Holden should continue the Commodore nameplate into the future with our next-generation large car.”

During 17 research sessions, Commodore owners and non-Commodore owners offered a range of views, with a strong majority favoring retention of the nameplate.

Almost 70% of unaided customer responses to the Commodore nameplate were positive, with participants citing the car’s reliability, performance and appropriateness for families.

Criteria cited by customers as keys to the Commodore’s future included ability to perform in Australian conditions, affordability, external styling, interior space, handling, power, acceleration, towing ability, and offering variants including luxury and sport.

The vehicle will be tuned and honed by GM Holden engineers and technicians at the company’s Lang Lang Proving Ground in the state of Victoria to ensure it performs in Australian conditions and to Australian expectations.

GM Executive Vice President and President of GM International Stefan Jacoby says the decision to retain the Commodore nameplate was not taken lightly.

“I cannot reveal full details of the next-generation vehicle, but I can say it will either compare very favorably or improve on the current Commodore’s dynamic performance, acceleration, fuel economy, running costs and mass,” Jacoby says.

“We are confident that from 2018, we can honor Commodore’s heritage and chart a new direction for the next-generation vehicle that is worthy of the esteemed Commodore name.”