Here’s a sad reality faced by many car enthusiasts: You see a lovely car for sale overseas and wish its automaker would just bring them to the United States. Sure, they may not have mass appeal, but think about the fun! I feel you; there’s not a day that goes by that I do not dream of owning a Smart Roadster. Some of these enthusiasts had their wish granted at least for a few years with the Chevrolet SS. This sport sedan–which started life as a Holden–doesn’t just have four doors and a 6.2-liter V8 making 415 HP, but you can have it paired with a manual transmission. Already a rare car, just 2,645 customers decided to row their own gears before Holden, and thus the SS, went belly up.
Last time on Holy Grails, reader tacotruckdave took us on an adventure with the Isuzu VehiCROSS. Perhaps known best to Americans for its cabover commercial trucks, Isuzu went through a period where it built outlandish vehicles. The marque even experimented with a V12 engine, putting in a bid to supply power to the McLaren F1 supercar. One often-forgotten vehicle from Isuzu’s period of dreaming is the VehiCROSS. Launched with few changes from its concept, the VehiCROSS looked weird but had some forward thinking. This was a late 1990s SUV with all-wheel-drive technology that you’d find in an SUV today. It’s the kind of vehicle that you’d think would never see production, but Isuzu did it, even if it was just a limited-production vehicle.
Today’s entry follows a similar idea. This car is rare, though, unlike the VehiCROSS, it’s not because it was built in a manner that would naturally limit production numbers.
Instead, just 12,924 examples of the Chevrolet SS exist and of those, only 2,645 were equipped with a manual transmission. The Chevy SS is sort of like a case study. The automotive press adored it and practically sang its praises from the rooftops. Those who bought them also seemingly couldn’t get enough. Yet, sales were a slow burn, only picking up some steam after General Motors, like a bartender, announced a last call before you wouldn’t be able to buy them anymore.
This suggestion comes to us from reader JBeckman, who makes a good argument that the Chevy SS isn’t just a holy grail, but maybe even the most underrated sport sedan in America.
Bob Lutz Looks To Australia For Fun
This story first takes us back to the mid-2000s. As Hagerty writes, General Motors’ former Australian division, Holden, had long been the odd one out in GM’s brand lineup. With exceptions for vehicles like the Cadillac CTS, if you wanted a fast sedan from GM you had to be ok with front-wheel-drive. The Chevy Monte Carlo, once an iconic rear-wheel-drive coupe, became front-wheel-drive in the 1990s and stuck with it. The Buick Regal, once famous for the sinister Grand National, became a sedan that you might associate with your grandparents. Pontiac had the Grand Prix and the Bonneville while Chevy also had the Impala.
If you wanted to have a rear-wheel-drive sporty car that could also carry your family, you were largely limited to the Cadillac CTS. In 2001, Bob Lutz was recruited by General Motors as product vice chairman. Part of his mission involved breathing some new life into GM’s lineup. Lutz would eventually have his hands in everything from the Pontiac Solstice and the Saturn Sky to the Chevy Cruze, the Cadillac CTS-V, and many more.
According to Hagerty, when Lutz was brought on in 2001, Holden was making waves with its Monaro. Unlike a lot of the fare from GM’s brands in America, Australia’s Holden was still smoking tires with rear-wheel-drive. This came after Lutz learned about the Commodore, from Hagerty:
“When I was still at Chrysler, and later at Exide,” he later related, “I kept reading U.S. car magazines. And every now and then one would have an article on the Holden Commodore. They would say something like, ‘Commodore is the GM car that can take on a BMW M5 … the best car General Motors has ever made.’”
Upon his arrival, Lutz got to work striking a deal with Holden to bring the Commodore-based Monaro over to America. When Lutz drove a Monaro, he felt that it was a car worthy of reviving the GTO name:
“I arranged to borrow a Commodore SS sedan, which had the same Corvette engine and gearbox as the Monaro, from GM’s U.S. engineering fleet, and we loved it. My wife got used to driving on the wrong side of the car, and I couldn’t pry her out of it.”
And when Lutz got a chance to drive a Monaro CV8 in early 2002, he was very impressed. “The more we looked at it,” he said, “the more we realized that, for the first time in 30 years, we actually had the basic structure to create a car worthy of the name GTO.”
Lutz eventually got the green light after he was able to convince GM’s North American Strategy Board that Monaros could be brought over for cheap. Unfortunately, the GTO wasn’t a strong seller. It was praised for its performance but some felt that it didn’t have the visuals to back up the name. Ultimately, just 40,808 examples were sold over three model years between 2004 and 2006.
Second Chances
This didn’t stop General Motors and the company went back to Australia again for another car. This time, GM would come back to America with the VE Commodore, badging it as the Pontiac G8. Pontiac would right some wrongs with a more aggressive style. Out of the other end, Pontiac would have a sport sedan and after a year of production, you were able to grab it with a 6.2-liter 415 HP LS3 V8 and paired to a manual transmission. And that wasn’t all, as GM even planned to bring over the Holden Ute as the G8 ST.
Perhaps it was a stroke of bad luck because the G8 released just in time for the Great Recession. The G8 sold for two model years between 2008 and 2009 before it was canceled. Pontiac itself wouldn’t survive the recession, either. Through that time, around 30,700 G8s found a home in America. Lutz, not wanting to give up on a good car, considered slapping Chevy badges on the Commodore and continuing sales.
Giving It One More Go
It would take until the 2014 model year for GM to give it another go. In 2014, Chevy unveiled the SS as its first V8 rear-wheel-drive performance sedan since 1996. Chevy touted the SS as having racing DNA thanks to its NASCAR debut at the Daytona 500. From Chevy:
“The Chevrolet brand was largely built on the strength of rear-drive performance sedans, yet it’s been 17 years since we’ve offered one,” said Mark Reuss, president of General Motors North America. “The all-new Chevrolet SS fills that void and fills it better than any other vehicle in the brand’s rich history. The comfort, convenience, spaciousness and V-8 power make the SS a total performance package unlike any other on the road today.”
Chevy wasn’t the only one excited about the SS. Motor Trend called the SS the spiritual successor to the Chevelle SS 454 and the first five-passenger car with more than 400 horses to be sold Chevy since that Chevelle. The SS had a big job, too, as it was supposed to be Chevy’s entry against the Dodge Charger.
The Grail
This time, there would be just one engine available. You got a 6.2-liter LS3 V8 making 415 HP and 415 lb-ft torque. At first, your only choice for transmission was a 6L80-E six-speed automatic, but in 2015, a six-speed Tremec TR-6060 manual became available. This is the one that reader JBeckman says to get:
The Chevy SS (2014-17) deserves to be a Holy Grail. Only around 12k total imported from Australia, they were the follow-on to the G8 (also a good candidate). From 2015 on you could get it with a 6-speed manual. RWD, LS V8 with 415 HP, 415 ft lbs of torque, 4 doors, 4 usable seats, a decent size trunk, sat nav, heads-up display, dual zone climate, heated/cooled seats, Bose sound, Brembo brakes, Automated Parking Assist (the first Chevey to have it) and GM Magna Ride with Tour/Sport and a track mode. All for $45k list, and then usually had discounts. And all STANDARD equipment. The only options were the color, the sunroof, the transmission (manual or auto), and spare tire or inflator kit.
All the stuff enthusiasts claim they want, but hardly anyone bought one (I did). People would come up to me not sure if it was a Malibu or an Impala since Chevy didn’t advertise it (even though it was their NASCAR car for a short time). If that’s not a Holy Grail I don’t know what is!
So far as I can tell, the paragraphs above were true! Chevy didn’t give you a bunch of options. They came more or less fully equipped for $45,770 after the added $1,300 gas guzzler tax. Car and Driver summed it up like this:
What We Like: A lot. The Chevy SS is one of the most underappreciated driver’s cars on the market, a lazy-day cruiser in the softest of its three drive modes (Tour, which slots below Sport and Track) yet equally at home on a challenging mountain road in its more aggressive settings. The ride quality can be firm, but the chassis’s overall poise is reminiscent of some of the great BMW M cars from the 1990s and 2000s. Despite some on-center vagueness, the electrically assisted power steering is precise and rich in feedback as the chassis loads up in corners. While the big Chevy is well equipped for the tire-smokin’ muscle-car thing, its understated appearance is welcome in heavy traffic, as are its quiet cabin, comfortable seats, and myriad amenities. Leather upholstery, heated and ventilated front seats, lane-departure warning, and much more are standard; besides transmission choice, the only options are paint color, a power sunroof ($900), and a full-size spare ($500) in place of the standard tire-inflation kit. And with a paltry 2895 sales in the U.S. last year, SS buyers are in an exclusive club.
The magazine’s noted downsides were the fact that more enthusiasts didn’t scoop them up and the fact that General Motors was killing off what Car and Driver thought to be America’s most underrated sport sedan. Though, if you had to force its testers to find something wrong, they weren’t amazed by the vehicle’s styling or their observed fuel economy of just 14 mpg. That could be forgiven by its 4.5-second sprint to 60 mph.
Ultimately, the Chevy SS would die at the end of the VF Commodore’s run in 2017. GM would later announce Holden’s death in 2020. In the end, the SS found fewer buyers than even the G8. Just 12,924 examples went home, of those, only 2,645 of them were manual. Enthusiasts have broken down production by color, year, and transmission choice. Some variations, such as purple and manual, are so rare that production numbers are in the dozens.
Despite the low production, you can expect to pay a lot of money for one of these. I found a dozen manual transmission-equipped Chevy SS for sale in America and all of them are $35,000 and higher.
(Photos: General Motors)
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I’ve got a Holy Grail suggestion. The ’92-’97 Audi UrS4/S6 (C4 body style). It had a turbo’d 2.2 I5 and a 5 speed (in U.S.) manual trans and the total sales for those 5 production years were maybe around 3000. They were sold in both wagon and sedan form and didn’t look very different from the ’92-97 100/A6 which they were based on. They never got the same love as the BMW M’s or Merc AMG’s of the same era but can be modded to be seriously quick.
All they had to do was support harmonized standards, US joining the UNECE standards, then it wouldn’t be as much of a challenge.
The GTO failed because there was no cheaper V6 option and no sunroof, either. The AUDM Monaro was available with the sunroof.
The Caprice failed because GM only allowed fleet sales and even got ANGRY when a dealer DARED sell one to a retail customer:
https://jalopnik.com/chevy-dealer-will-sell-you-a-new-caprice-police-car-5815228
As someone who has daily driven an ’05 GTO 6-speed since I bought it in 2007, I kept up with the developments of this chassis after they discontinued the GTO. The GTO was an insane performance bargain at around $32k brand new, but it had the misfortune of going up against the new retro Mustang and Pontiac couldn’t give them away.
Fast forward to the Chevy SS, and the exchange rate between AUS and the US had shifted dramatically to the point where the Chevy SS, while unique, was just too expensive. GM also didn’t learn their lesson from the GTO, as the Chevy SS is difficult to distinguish from a similar vintage Malibu. I’ve often had to do a double-take to confirm that I really was seeing an SS, it just blends in so well.
If they could have sold the car for just under $40k (closer to V8 Charger territory) and somehow made it look more exciting (without having to retool for new bodywork) it would have gone a long way to increasing sales.
The reality is that towards the end of GM making cars and not just SUVs and trucks is that some of them were pretty good. I rented a Malibu a few years ago on a trip and was pleasantly surprised with how nice it was. The interior and overall fit and finish was decent. It handled nicely. And despite being a 4 banger was fairly quick and even got decent fuel economy. A shame that hardly anyone noticed. I bet these are dirt-cheap even barely used.
I traded an ND for a 42 kilomile 6M SS back in November. Probably overpaid, but it was close to me and I don’t think it had seen rain or salt in its 6-year life by how clean the chassis was.
Zero regrets. I mean, none. I thought several times against a pushrod engine, and always kind of rolled my eyes at any LS swap project, but I get it now.
What gets so little praise in the reviews is the sound. Mine’s a ‘16, so it’s the Series II with the bi-modal exhaust. On top of bypassing muffler baffles in loud mode, the S-II has a special exhaust tip that sends reverberations into the trunk, which it then uses as an echo chamber to enhance the sound. And as someone who loves induction noise almost more than exhaust, there’s plenty of that in the cabin as well. I never thought a pushrod V8 would sound so good, but I live for on-ramp pulls. You just uncontrollably cackle like a toddler. I think I clapped my hands after a redline 2-3 shift, once.
The G8 is the best looking version of the VE/VF and you can’t change my mind. As much as I’d like a GXP, I’d be perfectly happy with a G8 GT.
As for the SS, I always hated the name and styling, but they’re cool nonetheless. There’s a guy by me with an LSA SS.
I looked hard at buying a new SS, but there were only a couple for sale in the state I was living in at the time, and all had markups. I recall seeing they were included in the 20% off sales and went to look at the sole 6MT one in the area (a few hours away), only to find they had increased the markup by 20%. It became fairly obvious to me the dealerships considered them collectible and weren’t going to be discounting them anytime soon. I still get excited whenever I see a SS (or G8 GT/GXP for that matter), but not enough to really consider paying today’s market price for one.
I lust after one of these. I had an 04 GTO and I regret letting it go, but after the divorce, even with the 0% financing it was just too much to afford with child support and all. So she had to go. I miss that car so much. Getting a manual SS is on my list of cars to find with the magnetic ride suspension. Which means no 2014s…which limits the number of manuals even more.
Maximum Bob Lutz is the entire reason why Chevy’s are sold (even today) with a trim package called “LTZ”. Bob wanted it to say “LUTZ”, but that was just too obvious.
Not quite. There was at the very least a Corsica LTZ model in the late 80s through 1991. After that, it wasn’t badged but was still available as the Z52 package starting in 1992.
At the time in the 90s, “Z5x” allegedly meant Lotus had signed off on suspension and performance tweaks.
A Z52 Corsica was an interesting little beast. Not as extreme as a Lotus Carlton, but still an entertaining small sport sedan that punched above it’s weight and front-wheel drive platform. I owned one and still miss that car.
Add to that an LTZ trim on the 1991 Caprice which also offered a bit more in handling, and eventually power as well; then the Lumina gained an LTZ for 1997-99 after the Caprice was dropped. Z__ had quickly rolled out across the Chevy lineup as a sport trim designation but only 2-door Chevys, so the Z in LTZ seems mostly a way of connecting it to those models and their extra level of sport. Maybe “LTS” would have been simpler as “Luxury Touring Sport” but might have been too close to Mercury who had LTS trims.
I’ve seen that “LUTZ” trim joke since he first rejoined GM in the early 2000s and Chevy started rolling it out again, but Lutz was at Chrysler when the Corsica LTZ debuted and wouldn’t have had anything to do with it. The 2002 TrailBlazer added a LTZ trim, but it debuted before Lutz joined GM in 2001.
One huge problem with this car is the name. SS should be a trim level, not a model name. Not only that, but those two letters are also strongly associated with the Nazi Germany and The Holocaust. I might have considered a “Chevelle”, but no way I’d own something named just the “SS” because of that association. The name was an immediate DQ for me and I suspect I’m not alone.
Also, it looked way too much like a Malibu.
The name was stupid (should have been Commodore SS), but this is literally insane.
You scoff, but that guy isn’t the only one. I wanted to buy one new, but we lived in an heavily orthodox Jewish neighborhood at the time. My wife told me “I drive a VW, you have a Porsche in the garage, and we have a dachshund. You are NOT buying a car called an ‘SS’”
I think this is more of a Caprice as that would be it’s spiritual predecessor. The ’96 Impala SS was esentially the same car as the 9C1 Caprice (police interceptor edition) with nicer paint. The kind of successor to this was also called the Caprice albeit being only available in government trim as a police car.
Yeah, I’ve never understood the naming, either. It’s terrible for a search term as well. When I put “Chevy SS” into a search engine for this piece, I got stuff like the Impala SS, Monte Carlo SS, and other models that weren’t this.
It’s funny, the main SS forum gets random posts from Impala and Chevrolet guys all the time, and they have to politely be re-directed.
I just tell people on the street who ask that it’s a Commodore. And for a “bland” looking car, there are a lot of conversations at gas stations. (And there are a lot of gas station trips…)
*Chevelle
Back in February 2019, I was car shopping after my car got T-boned and totaled. I was looking at WRX’s and such, but I saw a manual SS for 35k a mile or so away. I started to drool at the idea. However, a few factors caused me to not even have a chance to drive it. A cold snap that week (high of -5 degrees) caused the seller to not want to take the car out until it warmed up A LITTLE. Secondly, my wife and I were saving for a downpayment on a home and were planning on having kids soon too. Sadly, my practical side kicked in and I bought a manual Mazda3 instead of any of the “cool” cars.
During the chaotic post covid market, I kinda kicked myself a little when I saw them selling in the 50’s, but I’m now a dad and got into a new build house before prices got insane (neighbor homes have sold in the last week for 60-70k over what we paid). But the car enthusiast in me wishes I could have made it work…
I only knew about them because Hendrik Chevrolet had one squirreled away in the corner of the show room in police livery. Back then I thought they were pretty special, these days I would take one, but would require a 4K price concession to cover the price of Deleting the DFM system. otherwise they would be just as scary to own as a 5.4 Triton….
No need to delete, the LS3 doesn’t have any cylinder shutdown system.
I see one of these locally that’s rebadged as a Holden. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if that individual is on this very site. That’s a man or woman of CULTURE. Anyway, these are cool as hell but the combination of the lack of depreciation, parts scarcity, and GM-ey interior keep me away. If they were in the 20s I’d find them mighty appealing but at 35k+ I’d probably just find the nicest V8 Charger under 40 that I could instead. I know it wouldn’t offer a manual but for my bumper to bumper daily duty I’d rather have a ZF8 anyway.
A few years ago I saw a rebadged one while getting gas. It was pristine and the mysterious branding gave it a sleeper ass-kicking vibe.
There is a *rare* 6m purple SS on carscom right now that the seller purchased as a Holden conversion and switched it back to SS (the ad talks about this but no indication if the Holden parts come with the sale). I find it odd they went to the trouble to buy it and convert it back as I’d have just kept it as is. They also note that the swap has led to the front crash avoidance sensor being on the fritz so it’s led to an issue they don’t want to resolve.
Still, I want it in a bad way
I like the Chevy badging for two reasons:
1)The tiny front grill is much wider than it is tall. Proportionally, the longer bowtie fits the space better than the Holden circle. Plus if I squint I see the nose of the 1st gen AstonV8 Virage in there, and the bowtie looks like the wings 😉
2)Locally obscure logos detract from the sleeperness. Nobody suspects the roided-out Malibu, but put a strange lion in a circle there, and people pay attention and wonder what it is. I’ve got Holden wheelcaps and sill plates, and that’s good enough for me.
Judging by what they were selling for when I was looking for one last year, they aren’t *that* underrated. Finding one with a stick was damn near impossible.
Yup, they certainly aren’t flying under the radar for the past 5 years or so. Same with the V8 G8.
14 MPG city, 21 MPG highway, on premium gas. No surprise why it failed. Fuel prices were low, averaging $2.43 per gallon for regular in 2015, but not long before that had been close to $4.00 a gallon.
I looked at one, but never could understand why the mileage was so bad when a Corvette was rated 16 MPG city, 29 MPG highway. That, combined with NPC car styling and a GM interior meant that there was no way I’d buy one new. I was watching for a new model year and was hoping for improvements in MPG and styling inside and out when GM simply discontinued them.
I’ve watched them in the used market. A manual would be nice, but I’m still not finding them nearly compelling enough for the price compared to used Chargers and Challengers.
“never could understand why the mileage was so bad when a Corvette was rated 16 MPG city, 29 MPG highway.”
-The manual in the Corvette has a sky high 7th gear for highway cruising.
-The Holden has the aerodynamics and frontal area of a large sedan, not a small sports car.
-The Holden is almost 1000 lb heavier (matters more to the city number, but still).
As I outlined in my other post, the car didn’t fail anyways.
Our differences of opinion will remain unresolved…
There’s no reason these shouldn’t have been equipped with a tall top gear like the Corvette. Before the Corvette got a 7th gear, it had a really tall 6th. And even if not, the Camaro was rated 16/24 with a 6 speed manual, and had an even more powerful V8. Five performance gears and one cruising gear would’ve been completely understandable.
I still consider the Chevy SS a failure. It didn’t continue when a better managed product would have. GM didn’t care about this car enough to invest in its success.
(I also think they positioned it very poorly, selling it as a Chevy when its real competition was BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Jaguar, Lexus and maybe even Acura.)
You can have whatever opinion you want I guess.
But big sedans with big V8s don’t generally get good mileage.
The 6.4L Charger is 15/24 with an 8 speed auto.
The 5.5L S63 AMG was 15/23
The 6.2L S63 was 11/18
The product didn’t continue because Australian manufacturing was unsustainable and because by 2017 it didn’t make sense to engineer any new non-luxury sedans. It’s not the fault of the car itself, and more marketing wouldn’t have made a difference.
One look inside an SS will disabuse you of the notion that any luxury brand is its competition. The materials are fine, but certainly not to the levels of the brands you mention. Its competitors were the Taurus SHO and the Charger.
Gearing was just one thing. And honestly, 70mph in 6th in the SS is still just turning just, like, 1500 RPM.
You can’t gear your way out of aerodynamics, and the frontal area of a full-size sedan is much higher than a hatchback sports car.
Love the VF Commodore. For me, it seemed Holden had long had performance and handling nailed with the Commodore – with the VF it felt like they’d finally got build quality sorted. Alas, it was to be the last one.
Had one as a loaner for a week while my Cruze was in for a new gearbox (at 3 months old). At the end of the week I really did not want to give the keys back!
Imagine if you had the “more” versions from HSV that we got in Australia and New Zealand….
https://www.hsv.com.au/see/gen-f2/
The idea of bringing the Commodore over stretches back to the ’90s even. GM had tossed Holden development dollars for a LHD variant of the Commodore and the Buick XP2000 was meant to test that but ultimately it was canceled.
I guess in a way that did eventually happen as the final Commodore became a counterpart of the final Buick Regal/Opel Insignia; I guess that makes the final Buick Regal GS was the closest thing to a successor as its Commodore equivalent was the new top performance variant…
Love mine, it’s a great family car for me. The kids love it almost as much. I missed on it new because I didn’t need a new car at the time and I was nervous about 415hp and rwd in the snow with kids. Bought it used a year later and put winter tires on and never regretted a thing (other than not buying it earlier).
So a common misconception (already seen in the comments here) is that marketing, design, or any number of other failures by GM led to this car selling below expectations in the US.
In fact, making the LHD model for export was a condition of negotiations with the Australian government and the union to keep the plant open longer. As the number of units was contractually obligated, there wasn’t much incentive to spend money marketing. GM knew the SS was going to appeal to enthusiasts, it was going to be well reviewed, and it would have a “forbidden fruit” aspect for those in the know. No further advertising was necessary to sell all the cars they wanted/needed to.
As for the car itself, I use a 2016 6M as my daily driver 9 months of the year. It has some faults (cheap trim pieces especially), but it fits 3 car seats across in the back, and has an LS3 and a TR6060, so any complaints obviously have to be tempered. Parts availability is already becoming a concern, as it was with the G8. So that’s something to worry about in the future too.
Finally, I have to mention that there were a couple occasions when GM included the SS in their “20% off MSRP across the board, except Corvette and Camaro” sales promotions, which seems insane in retrospect. Probably most people at the RenCen didn’t really understand what the car was and just wanted them off lots. That’s how I ended up with mine for under $40K new, which again seems impossible to believe from a 2023 perspective.
Nice addition, particularly the 20% off promotion reference as I remember seeing that and wishing I had the funds to afford a SS at the time. I always felt the mid-aughts employee pricing for GM discounts were often “misused” by consumers in that they ended up with a G6 or Cobalt instead of say the 9-2x Aero or Vibe, both thousands of dollars less than the near identical WRX or Matrix.
GM was supposedly targeting at least 20,000 sales per year, but I strongly suspect that was a bullshit number they made up to help justify cancelling the SS later.
I agree, that was about what the G8 sold, with V6 and lesser V8 models included.
I got mine at a discount as well, not during the “20% off” sale though.
“As the number of units was contractually obligated, there wasn’t much incentive to spend money marketing.”
Thanks for bringing this up; I rarely see it mentioned when people call the SS a flop. By the time they brought it over to America, GM had already decided to close the factory (and probably the Holden brand), so it didn’t matter how well the SS sold. It was always intended to be a one-and-done model in limited numbers.
This comment strikes me as well. My buddy has an ’04 GTO. Parts availability is impossible at this point.
“The Buick Regal, once famous for the sinister Grand National, became a sedan that you might associate with your grandparents”
Yes, but there was a coupé version of the Regal as well: I had a black 1995 Regal GS two-door. Okay, there wasn’t much ‘sport’ in the Grand Sport but it was comfortable and much cheaper than the Buick Riviera. And it had a whopping 170hp. 🙂
The Regal GS with the supercharged 3800 wasn’t bad for its time (and for GM at the time). Certainly still had “grandparents” styling, but I recall the car mags thought it performed pretty well.
I drove one for a few years. It’s not great. Better off with the Grand Prix with the Supercharged 3800. Suspension and handling were much sportier.
The Buick was still soft, lots of body roll, numb steering, still a Buick. Certainly better with the supercharger, but honestly not that much more fun than the standard NA 3800. I drove one of each.
I really loved my 2015 SS. It took me several months of hunting around to find a manual, as they were few and far between, but I finally found one after almost giving up (and having been on wait lists for others in case those deals fell through). But my left knee did not after daily driving it for 5 years, so eventually I traded it in for a 911 with the PDK. Before that, I had a G8 GT (the auto, as the GXP with the manual didn’t come out until the next year; I traded it in on for the SS). Both the G8 and the SS held their value well. The SS had a much nicer interior than the G8 and a manual, so trading up was an easy choice (the auto in the G8 was meh). If not for my knee I might have kept the SS. I do have a 2001 Boxster with a 5-speed for the track (buy them now while they are still dirt cheap!) but since I only drive it occasionally my knee will put up with it.
FTR, there is no longer a decent manual transmission American V8 4-door for less than $30k, anywhere, any style that is less than 15 years old.
I want this car so bad.
Uh, that’s because they didn’t exist in the USDM? The only American+V8+manual+4-doors in the last 40(!!!)+ years are:
Cadillac CT5-V
Chevrolet SS
Pontiac G8
Cadillac CTS V (1st/2nd Gen)
/End thread
(Probably missing a 4-door heavy-duty truck or malaise-era car or 2, but I don’t think that’s what you are referring to)
And none of those sold in high volumes hence they won’t be getting any cheaper than now.
Dodge didn’t even give us a Charger with the manual+V8 from the Challenger, which is a shame as they would’ve sold dozens of them.
Precisely!
And all of them are GM products taboot!
Chevrolet barely advertised that this car even existed. Folks didn’t want a daily driver that got 14 city mpg, and premium fuel only, please. Is it a good car? Yes. Is it flashy? No. I’m not surprised that sales were low.
As an Aussie, I’ve driven several SS Commodores of various models and in sedan/ute form (haven’t had a chance to drive an SS wagon yet!), they truly are great all-rounders.
It’s still sad that vehicle production has been absent from Australia for five years now.
I’m planning to write about how the market shifted over the decades and the slow decline in local manufacturing.
I’m not sure how GM could have marketed these cars better to the US market (just how aggressive do you want the GTO to be?) and how many more sales would have impacted on Holden’s bottom-line in the face of currency fluctuations and international competition.
Since they didn’t market them *at all*, pretty much anything would have been better. I only found out about it online on enthusiast sites.
Sorry, should have clarified, the SS they didn’t do marketing at all, was it the same with the GTO or G8?
Pretty much. There was a little G8 marketing, but again, I found out about it from enthusiast web sites. The GTO did have some marketing as I recall.
The G8 came in a V8 and V6 model – I saw a lot of the 6’s around, they were Pontiac’s “big sedan” and fairly cheap.
The GTO definitely had more marketing than the G8 or the SS, as I remember a variety of television commercials for the GTO (a black one at a stop light stand out in my memory) as well as some product placement for it in TV shows and movies. I recall seeing billboards and ads in automotive magazines for the G8, though I don’t recall telivision commercials for any of them beyond the GTO.
The G8 had a funky TV commercial that played during March Madness 2008 (I remember this because I had just bought mine)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsG8bySwoiI
How did I forget about that one?!
I don’t know why automakers will offer a special edition car and not advertise it! I feel like the Taurus SHO was the same way. They were advertising mundane cars as “sporty” at the time because they had the aero kit and nothing more, but they didn’t train their sales reps that every person who looked longingly at a Mustang GT, but had a family, should have been IMMEDIATELY directed to an SHO.
I suspect that people who would buy a special edition car already know about it, and people who need ads to get them in the door wouldn’t pay the extra cost. It’s sad to admit, but people like us are a rounding error in the grand scheme of car buyers.