2008 HSV GTS Review

Everyone with any trace of motor oil in their veins should have an imaginary Lotto garage. This is the one stocked with your exotica of choice, from supercars to super tankers. I have one, and the car you see here would be in it, but not for the reason you think.

The new E Series HSV cars are quite frankly amazing. With huge cubes and impressive power outputs, the Clubsport, Senator and GTS can lay down more rubber than a tyre factory any time you want. Just switch the stability control off and stab at the throttle. Voila, instant burnout/oversteer depending on where you are point the steering wheel.

Yes, from the point of view of a BMW M5 driver they are crude machines, but then again that's the point. These are throwbacks to an earlier age where horsepower and the ability to transform a tyre into a wall of smoke was king.

It does go further than that of course, because the switch to using the VE Commodore as a base has enabled HSV to build virtually world class cars, even if some of the interior plastics are stiff and have disturbingly sharp edges. The VE Commodore is a good car based on a good rear wheel drive chassis and the HSV range just builds on that.

It's also a sign that HSV is being taken seriously by General Motors that the HSV cars get different rear wings and tail lights. The tail lights are not all that important in the scheme of things, but committing to a stamping press to turn out a different rear wing to the mass produced VE wing is a big step - a multi million dollar step.

It's also a big step for Holden New Zealand to allow a six speed manual GTS loose on the New Zealand press fleet.

I was actually expecting the auto, which would make it harder to be a bit of a hoon, but no, I got the full on self service manual and for a whole week I had one hell of a time. A power output of 307kW isn't all that amazing these days, but usually for that sort of power output you have to have something with four rings, a blue propeller or a three pointed star on the bonnet - and an equally exclusive price tag.

You do get what you pay for in those cars though, which is usually a refined, very fast car. What you get with HSV is an animal posing as vehicular transportation. Of course HSV has always specialised in this sort of thing, and while I can remember fearing for my life behind the wheel of a much older model of HSV, this one has just the right balance of animal and zoo keeper.

Even when you switch the stability control off the chassis is benign and controllable, although it is advisable to keep the stability control on when the road is anything but bone dry. And the sound is something that is lacking in many similarly powerful cars.

It's a deep throated rumble that sounds like it's come from a dinosaur horror movie, and thanks to the new engine there's torque spread like a thick layer of butter on toast all the way across the rev range. The previous V8 was highly strung, and needed to be revved to get good performance, but the new LS2 V8 breathes deeply from the moment you move off and is ready for action whenever you feel like it.

Of course, this GTS is the top spec performance version of the range. They've all got 307kW (411 horsepower) and 550Nm (405 lb ft) from the 6.0 litre V8, but the GTS adds several former cows that now cover the seats and Magnetic Ride Control. This is a pretty trick piece of engineering and it relies on the way iron particles suspended in a fluid act in the presence of a magnetic field.

To put it simply, the dampers in the GTS are filled with this fluid and are surrounded by a magnetic coil. The stronger the magnetic field, the more viscous the fluid becomes, increasing the damping. Since you can adjust the magnetic field virtually infinitely within the settings allowed, you can alter the damping effect by the same amount.

Not only that, the GTS offers a 'track' setting, which assumedly really stiffens the damping up. The only problem is that the difference between 'track' and normal is only just noticeable. Perhaps it would really come in handy on an actual race track, but even on normal the ride quality is on the hard side. A

udi has a similar system in the new TT, and with that there's an every real and noticeable difference between settings. I reckon that HSV doesn't want anyone accusing it of going soft and that's why even on the soft setting everything's pretty hard.

The sticking point is that there's an NZ$14,000 difference between an entry level Clubsport R8 and the NZ$91,990 GTS, and most of that must be because of the Magnetic ride. The R8 has conventional dampers and they are tuned well enough that you'd never really need the magnetic ride, so you could save money by going for the equally quick R8.

So why would the GTS be in my Lotto garage? For one thing, I'd be able to afford it, I like the standard leather, and I could get Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking round to retune the magnetic ride.