Holden Special Vehicles is studying the development of a rival for the hard-core Ford Ranger Raptor based on the Holden Colorado ute.
The high-flying, long-legged ute would be a further extension of the HSV SporstCat pick-up line-up, and could be either locally-developed or a locally-converted right-hand drive version of North America’s Chevrolet Colorado ZR2.
Both potential development avenues have their engineering plusses and minuses and neither has been signed off.
“We are not very far down the line,” said HSV managing director Tim Jackson. “We have done one Colorado SportsCat, now what does the next one look like?
“Where should we take it? Where should we go?
“You can see from a Ranger Raptor, from the ZR2, there are those kinds of vehicles around. So, what are the parameters that are different, what are the benefits that you get and what are the things you don’t get?”
The Ford Ranger Raptor goes on sale in September priced from $74,990. It is powered by a new 2.0-litre twin-turbo diesel engine mated to 10-speed automatic transmission.
The big talking point is the Fox Shox suspension, which motoring.com.au experienced in a ride-along last year during the vehicle’s development.
The ZR2 is based on the US-spec Colorado, has a choice of petrol V6 or turbo-diesel four-cylinder power and rides on Multimatic shocks. motoring.com.au sampled the ZR2 in North America last year.
While HSV has developed the SportsCat and offers the option of Aussie-developed Supashock suspension, it is a vehicle aimed at buyers who will drive it on-road most of the time.
Going after the Raptor is a more expensive proposition because longer-travel suspension requires unique additions, such as extended suspension arms and driveshafts and a wider track.
That theoretically makes importing and converting the ZR2 a more cost-effective proposition, especially considering HSV is gaining more experience in local conversion with the Chevrolet Silverado and Camaro.
But Jackson questioned that logic.
“You are making an assumption that you have a dash that fits, you have a steering rack that fits in right-hand drive, that you don’t have to do an emission program for the local market,” he said.
“So there is a bunch of things. On the flipside … what timeframe you have to do it in? What tools do you have at your disposal?
“And I think one thing we are trying to make sure that we do and what attracts us to certain vehicles is there needs to be a certain execution,” Jackson added.
“We have got to feel there is a really good execution of whatever product there is and be bold and make a statement.
“Those vehicles [Raptor, ZR2] do, so they naturally fit in our minds in our wheelhouse. But we need to make sure we have done a really good execution of them -- there’s no point doing a bad one.”
A Raptor rival is a different project to the road-focussed Wildfire being developed by HSV parent company Walkinshaw Group, which twins a turbo-petrol V6 with the Colorado.
That program is currently progressing only slowly as the company struggles to overcome technical issues relating to the electrical management of the car.
Jackson made it clear the company sees a significant opportunity with the Colorado, as sales of dual-cab utes grow and more and more variants are introduced at the higher-end (and therefore more profitable) part of the segment.
“Do you want a tonne in the back? Do you want to be flying over hills? Do you want to go over corrugations exceptionally well? Do you want to handle road corners really nicely? What sort of steering weighting do you want? What grip on the road? What grip off the road? What sort of tyre noise? There is a compromise around every corner and it’s fun to try and find that and get that right,” he said.
“So we think there is lots of scope to develop and grow. We are really happy with our first execution of it but we can see it’s an area that is really growing and it’s a really dynamic part of the market.
“So we can’t sit still and rest on our laurels.”