HSV to diversify

HSV has big plans for Holden's next-generation Commodore – but you’re not hearing them… Well, not just yet anyway.

With the Holden hot tuner’s MY17 program for the outgoing rear-drive Australian-made Commodore made public today, HSV boss Tim Jackson is not in any hurry to announce plans for the next generation, which will be based on Opel's next Insignia and imported from Germany.

But he has confirmed the Victorian-based performance vehicle operation will seek to diversify its business away from a dependence on Holden's traditional donor sedan.

“We’ll probably look to answer what we think we’re doing [with Commodore] in a couple of months,” Jackson told motoring.com.au in an interview at HSV’s Clayton headquarters last week.

“We’ve always taken a view that we have to provide… an exciting car. If we don’t provide an exciting car, our reason to exist disappears. No one’s going to buy us,” he said candidly.

“In terms of what exactly we’re going to do on the [MY18] Commodore platform, we’ll probably have to wait a little bit of while before we reveal that,” he said.

HSV’s core business has been Commodore-based since its inception 30 years ago. Indeed, when the last VFII Commodore-based HSVs roll off the line later this year the lion’s share of the company’s total production of 90,000 cars will share that DNA.

Now, the arrival of the next-gen car presents challenges – not the least of which are options to power-up the naturally-aspirated, front/all-wheel drive V6 Opel-based vehicle.

While the scope of HSV’s Commodore-based offerings will necessarily change, so too will HSV diversify away from dependency on sedan models in its next generation.

“We’re looking at a couple of things in terms of how HSV will look in the future. Probably the best way to describe it is we won’t necessarily have all our eggs in one basket. We’ll have a more diversified [model] portfolio.

Still, Jackson was cautious when motoring.com.au asked whether this would see HSV versions of Holden SUVs and light commercials.

“We don’t operate in a bubble. We’ve had a great, a very loyal, customer base around a fairly stable platform for a long period of time but that world’s changing and we need to change with it.

“What we want to do is take what has traditionally been our DNA, which is really exciting performance vehicles, and see how we can execute that in different platforms,” Jackson explained.

When quizzed on whether that would include vehicles like the Colorado or Holden’s new Equinox and Acadia SUVs, Jackson was guarded.

“I won’t go into the specifics of which [Holden] products we’re looking at, only to say that, yeah, we see our future being a more diversified portfolio,” he said.

The outgoing locally-built HSVs feature bespoke engines, bodywork and options. They are in effect the ‘most-HSV’ HSVs ever. Jackson says the level of differentiation in the most recent HSV models has created the company’s biggest challenge moving forward.

“The cost of delivering that [level of] differentiation remains the same but on any single platform, the [future] volume might not be delivered. So part of the planning process is to know that there’s a couple of different plans in play underneath… A couple of different ways to maybe get the return on our investment,” he said.

Jackson says leveraging HSV's strong relationship with local GM engineering teams into the wider GM world is a key part of HSVs future strategy.

“What we’re going through at the moment is working to define how those things will work in the future. It is a critical element of what we do in the background, to make sure everyone’s comfortable and everyone understands how that will work…

“There’s a change in workflow that’s going to take place and we need to be respectful and make sure that everyone within Holden and GM are comfortable with that,” the HSV boss explained.