When new, the VR Commodore was a perfectly respectable choice for a new car. Fleets loved the base Executive and families loved the safety-focussed Acclaim. There were posher Berlina and Calais models for management types, utes for tradies, and SS V8s for enthusiasts. Few people hold onto their car forever, however, and eventually a car changes hands a few times and ends up in the driveway of a very different owner. And so it was that the VR Commodore and the facelifted VS have become so ingrained in my mind (and many others’) as “bogan” cars.
What is a bogan, you may ask? It sounds pejorative but it’s a commonly-used word in Australian vernacular. Broadly speaking, it means somebody who is unrefined or unsophisticated. The marks of boganism typically include a love of cheap Aussie beer, a preponderance towards wearing one’s hair (if male) in a mullet or with a rat’s tail, and a prolific tendency towards flannelette shirts, Stubbies shorts, and Southern Cross tattoos. It’s a term used nationally and isn’t necessarily a socio-economic distinction, and some people wear the label with pride.
The Aussie TV show Upper Middle Bogan ran from 2013 to 2016.
If this all sounds horribly classist, like some Australian analogue to “white trash” and “trailer trash”, it’s not really. Maybe we take things less seriously here but bogan isn’t quite so offensive a term to bandy around. In my experience as someone from a lower-middle-class background, you’re less likely to offend an Aussie by calling them a bogan as you would by calling an American “trailer trash”. Perhaps it’s closer to “redneck” in terms of affection. The word has even ended up in the Oxford English Dictionary, wherein it’s defined as:
An unfashionable, uncouth, or unsophisticated person, especially regarded as being of low social status.
Now, I don’t mean to cast aspersions on all VR/VS Commodore owners but it didn’t surprise me to see this VS Calais missing its licence plates and left by the side of the road. Maybe the owner is just keeping it there temporarily. Or maybe it’s like so many other VR/VS Commodores I’ve seen: often being hooned around Brisbane suburbs, or wrapped around a street light, or wearing the fluroscent yellow “Police Aware” signs officers affix to abandoned cars.
I figured the VRs and VSs would eventually disappear from our roads, much as their VN and VP predecessors appear almost extinct. I had assumed they would be used up or hooned to death by bogans, who’d eventually graduate to VTs as those later models got older and cheaper and inevitably changed hands. However, there are still a decent number of VRs around which puts some holes in my theory. And some of them seem to have never changed hands.
Even more perplexing is how the VR and VS Commodores seem to outnumber the contemporary EF and EL Falcons. There was no gulf in reliability and, while the Commodore probably had the edge in outright handling ability, typical VR/VS drivers aren’t exactly going to take their Commodores autocrossing.
The deaths of the Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore are often attributed to the rise of the crossover and increasingly large and comfortable small cars. One other reason could quite possibly be the cars’ image. As the owner of two Falcons and one Commodore, I certainly heard a few cracks about my “bogan” cars. I can’t blame used Falcon and Commodore buyers: these cars can be bought cheap, they’re reliable, powerful and have burnout potential.
Image aside, the VR Commodore was a fundamentally good car and a step-up from its VP predecessor, itself a revision of the 1988 VN. There was a new front suspension for the first time since the Commodore’s launch in 1978 and track was widened 1.5 inches. The VR had the first driver’s airbag of any Australian car and there was a new dashboard design, more modern if still rather plasticky. Independent rear suspension and anti-lock brakes were now fitted to most models.
Exterior sheetmetal was heavily revised on sedans, although wagons and utes retained their old bodywork aft of the A-pillars including squared-off rear wheel arches that now didn’t match their counterparts at the front. I only recently noticed that and now I can’t un-see it.
The 3.8 V6 (174 hp, 217 ft-lbs) and 5.0 V8 (221 hp, 283 ft-lbs) engines were carried over from the VP, with higher-output 5.0 and 5.7 V8s available in the Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) range. Four-speed automatic and five-speed manual transmissions were available across the entire engine range. An Opel-sourced 2.6 Dual Ram inline six-cylinder engine (147 hp, 162 ft-lbs) was offered in export models. I learned that flipping through the owner’s manual of a friend’s VR many years ago and it was a source of great befuddlement.
HSV models still had that boy-racer look to them with various garish cosmetic embellishments. It wasn’t until the E Series models of 2006 that HSV finally employed a cohesive yet aggressive design language to their modified Holdens, only to bollocks it all up for the E-Series 2 facelift. Visual impurity notwithstanding, VR HSV models packed a lot of punch: 248 hp and 302 ft-lbs in the 5.0-powered models, and 288 hp and 350 ft-lbs in the 5.7 models. The main HSV models were the base Clubsport, Maloo ute, and luxury Senator.
In 1995, the visually almost identical VS brought a thoroughly overhauled 3.8 V6, now labelled as part of the Ecotec family, with a new engine block, heads and manifolds among other enhancements. Power was up by 22 hp and torque by 6 ft-lbs and yet fuel economy was improved by 5%. As had become tradition with the Commodore, there was a minor, mid-cycle Series II revision. The big news with the Series II was the introduction of Holden’s first supercharged V6 as an option in the luxury Calais and the long-wheelbase Statesman and Caprice models.
VT Commodore
The VT Commodore of 1997 was the Commodore’s first bona fide, ground-up redesign but the new Statesman/Caprice and ute models weren’t available until 1999 and 2000, respectively, leaving the VS models to carry on until then.
The Commodore wrestled the number one sales slot back from the Falcon in 1996 with the VS and never again would the Falcon outsell the Commodore. And so it was that the VR and VS Commodores were bought by thousands of families, executives, fleet buyers and police agencies. Despite this, I just can’t help but think of these thoroughly competent cars as bogan mobiles.
Related Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1988-91 Holden VN Commodore – Revisiting the Opel Mine
Curbside Classic: 1998-2002 Ford AU Falcon – Proven Mechanicals, Avant-Garde Styling
Geez, I loved my 2009 Pontiac G8 GT. Great sedan but I wished it were a station wagon or ute ( Pontiac El Camino?) . Since Pontiac left us sometime ago all G8s have become orphans driven by those who appreciate what they offer and are very uncommon
I actually just saw a Pontiac G8 GXP on the road yesterday morning. A sort of pseudo CC effect, I guess, being pretty much a Commodore. Last of the [Pontiac] V8s.
I see a whiff of Pontiac, among other things, in some of the cars pictured. One of the cars appears to have the same wheels as a 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix I once owned. I was thinking at first that the U.S. equivalent of bogan would be redneck, but after further review I think that “good old boy” might be a better match. In my experience rednecks are nearly always from the lower socio-economic classes while good old boys can be found all over the spectrum. Not that you don’t run across the occasional redneck with some money, or at least decent credit, otherwise there would not be the huge market for 60,000-70,000 dollar pickup trucks.
Australia isn’t as inequal as the US (even if it’s racing to catch up) so bogans might be relatively comfortably off, but I think Will gave the game away by implying that bogans might be responsible for a variety of antisocial behavior. I think it’s pretty close to redneck or trailer trash, there is just a different attitude to the lower orders down under. Good old boy doesn’t really translate.
Bogan equates to the English chav, whose vehicle of choice is either a BMW or an Audi.
Would you be as so kind as to explain to me the difference between a chav and a bloke? That’s the one bit of English vernacular that has eluded me more than any other.
Bloke just means any man, although you’re more likely to hear working class/lower middle class people use it. “Blokish” has become a shorthand for man who partakes in stereotypical “man activities” like drinking beer and wolf-whistling at women. (Or “birds” as he probably calls them)
Chav has been the source of debate on intellectual radio shows and no doubt in university theses. It was used regionally before it went nationwide, and seems to have different implications in different places. Generally it implies not just lower class, but lacking in taste, style, manners – I am from one of the regions where it was in use before it came to the media’s attention and it definitely implied a predilection to boorish and antisocial behavior.
I thought a typical chav car would be a car such as a VW Polo, Fiesta that has a lot of custom exterior trim like ground effects, custom exhaust tips (like coffee can/angry bumblebee sound), and fancy wheels, plus decals across the top of the windscreen. Kind of like a UK version of a rice racer.
It is, but they are not as prevalent as they were, there seems to be a generational shift to used semi-prestige brands, which can be picked up for pennies – assuming you’re old enough to afford the insurance.
Boganism is alive and well in the United States, we just call them rednecks. Like bogans, this lifestyle is not necessarily tied to socio-economic status. Their vehicle of choice is a Ford, Chevrolet, or Dodge pickup truck.
I don’t know what it says about me, but when I was in Australia I wanted a VS, or maybe a Toyota Lexcen for weirdness. I ended up with a EL Falcon. We don’t have bogans where I’m from – I must be a chav or a schemie.
I just bought a Crown Vic. I’ll have to cut off the mufflers, get Mustang wheels and maybe a southern Cross on the hood just to confuse people. Sheepskin seat covers and rear window louvers would be the pièce de résistance.
The desire for a VS says you’re a bogan. Maaate.
Or more realistically, it says you wanted a pretty-fast, dead-reliable, decently-economical, cheap-to-service, roomy and not-bad-looking car, for not too much money. And if it was when they were near-new, tariffs and govt/fleet buying rules/habits meant there were approximately 1.8 billion of them to choose from.
The Falcon was the better choice (even the EL with that bizarre fish-mouth-with-mustache-inside grille). All of the Holden’s features as above, but smoother, more relaxed, and with far safer handling than the tipsy and excitable Commode.
My brother, not badly-off but often a bit squeezy of wallet, and not a car person, he went against my sage advices and bought a (he thought) bargain Toyota Lexcen – only to be thoroughly miffed later on when it proved to have no resale value at all. Were I the mean-spirited type, I’d have said “I told you so”. (In fact, I did, but am now both confessing and digressing).
William, I sympathize with you getting remarks about your bogan cars. I just happen to love the same huge old American sedans as the folks on the “wrong side of the tracks.” So people who get to know me before they see my cars are inevitably shocked that I’m not driving a modern BMW or something. And it’s usually lots of fun to surprise them with a boxy Cadillac or Lincoln.
Plus, I have a lot of friendly parking-lot conversations with the type of people who probably wouldn’t otherwise approach me. Old cars won’t lead to world peace, but they do help us connect to our fellow man.
Right on. I’ve met more interesting people driving my Delta 88, my Geo and the Saturn then with any new car ( except my 2000 Prius when new). We down trodden enjoy the benefits of these non mainstream autos. I especially like the lack of a car payment and not worrying about door dings/scratches.
So GM’s appeal to the bogan demographic is apparently a worldwide phenomenon? In these parts I’d see the 2000 era Impala as having a parallel trajectory. To be fiar, Dodge Intrepids of the same timeframe would fit the bill too, but most of those have gone the way of the dodo by now.
Yeah, it seems GM products often suffer from image problems in many markets. Europeans, for example, don’t seem to see Opel/Vauxhall as being on the same level as Volkswagen. In the US, many look down upon domestic cars, GM included. And here, Commodores have a bit of a bogan image and other products in the lineup never sell as well as certain Japanese rivals.
Indeed, the Opel Manta fits your pattern, as the car of the German lower middle-class poseur (which sounds to me like an American 280ZX owner). With Mantas becoming antiques, what will replace them in this role?
“Guido” is slang for the Italian-American equivalent. I learned this watching a medico reality show in which a certain single lady doctor declared she didn’t want to date this type.
I guess in Britian even the Manta was considered classy compared to a Capri…
Uh oh, is our own Ed Stembridge at risk for creeping Boganism as his Commodore ages? Maybe not since his is actually a Chevrolet . . . oh, wait . . .
“I knew Ed as a respectable family man and hard worker. Then he bought that darned Holden sedan and now all he does is sit shirtless on the front porch drinking beer and shooting bottle rockets at passing traffic. It was the car, I tell ya.” 🙂
Jeez; I had Ed pegged as a bogan the first time I met him. 🙂
I resemble that remark! (c:
A friends son had VR SS until it was recently stolen, found burnt out the next day in a riverbed these cars had minimal security, not bad to drive in their day,
We had a VT on the milk fleet last year it still goes and was in recent use unfortunately for the current user it has a GPS tracker in it and he was clocked at 180kmh in it, I was impressed, better than the later alloytech cars the early 3.8s at least have some low down torque and go when you stand on the gas, later V6s downshift and rev hard but dont go anywhere.
I grew up on Vancouver Island in the 80s and I think the equivalent there would be a headbanger, although I may be one of the last to sport a mullet, wear black jeans and listen to heavy metal, my Aussie colleague calls me a bogan. Images of rocker dudes with an engineless Camaro up on blocks in the driveway come to mind, Hell’s Bells cranked up full blast.
Now living in the UK and a family man with a professional career, I’m ready to ditch the Grand Voyager for an Australian built Vauxhaul Monaro, just don’t let the wife know how much they go for here. I just need one last V8 before they ban them off the roads forever in favour of driverless electric pods and public transport.
The more I read this the more the Canadian equivalent would be the 1988 to early 2000s Buick Century/Regal right down to the 3.8 V-6.
They’d start of as old people or salesmen’s cars all shiny and new.
As time(and owners) marched on they would work their way down the ladder usually collecting a mismatched door or two, a couple of dents and the famous biodegradable rocker panels.
Their last stop seemed to be young single mom’s with a car seat attached and no exhaust or a couple overloading it with 4 kids, Grandma and Auntie, running two inches off the ground as.
We’ve all been at that point where a car was a huge chunk of a little budget so as long as it moved under its own power that was all the attention it got.
As was said above, someone of ” lower economic/ social status ” who just needs wheels that run.
My uncle was a big proponent of the “bogan” car. He worked in the IT department of a large hospital\university. His round trip commute was a whopping 12 miles. The money he saved by not buying new cars went into a deck, a kitchen redo, and a big block swap for his Corvette.
Perhaps Holden, (dec), should have used the tag “Believe Us, Engineered Like No Other Car” with the VN-VS, and it would have a ring of truth: because believe me, you wouldn’t want any other car engineered this way. Also, it’s unlikely the more truthful “Lashed Together Hurriedly Like No Other Car” mayn’t have sold.
The VR/VR at least bestowed a passable interior – the VN’s dash was just one featureless, instrumentless and extremely unpleasant plastic moulding that included the steering wheel – completed styling – the VN just looked unfinished – and quite reasonable steering to the VN original (which was ‘orrid) but they still insisted on attaching the live rear axle by the novel method (now illegal) of squirrells. Add lightness and a hugely torquey, uncouth V6, and it was not possible to drive these paragons of virtue in a straight line. With the wear of only perhaps 15,000 miles, they even gave torque-steer, yes, torque-steer, from the woefully-located rear end. There is only so much a pair of fidgety animals can sustain without stretching or tiredness. The one pictured at the top is shown in it’s safest state, abandoned, as the lightness shows up in a smash and not much is ever left of the car or owner within.
The bogans now aren’t misbehaving in these when they do donuts or enwrap local gum trees. They are merely trying to get to shops.
It seems apt that Holden’s skinny-brained engineering should now be in the hands of those for whom knowledge (like immigrants and refinement and taste) is not a virtue.
LOL at “trying to get to the shops”. I recall a damp evening in Scarborough, WA a few years ago when every bogan in town seemed to have run out of milk.
I never drove a VR/VS but rode in them and they did seem sportier but significantly less “solid” than the Falcon.
Thanks for the laugh, both of you! 🙂
He looks more Opel than the Senator B itself! As the Daewoo Prince was based on the Senator A and the Commodore on the Senator B, That nice VS looks like a supposed next generation of the Prince!
SSSSH dont say that, GMH spent gazzillions in adevertising copy extolling the Strayan engineering of its cars, fortunately a lot of people fell for the propaganda.
You’re a man on a mission, Bryce. You seem to bring this up with almost every article relating to Aussie cars…
For what it’s worth, there was plenty of Aussie engineering in these… in that it was changed so much from the Opel it was related to. I didn’t say changed entirely for the better, mind you.
He’s an annoyance is what, his comments on every aussie car you’ve posted over the years on this site are dejecting.
Great post William! Sheds some more light on these vehicles. A good 20 years ago my grandparents went to Australia and brought back a small book called “The Holden Heritage” for me (still got it here, the price tag of 6 AUS$ still on it). It chronicled the big Holden models from the very beginnings to 1995, the year of publication. I read it from cover to cover many times, gradually understanding more as my English improved. This VS was the current Commodore model at the time and I’ve been lusting after one ever since, even today despite never having been to Australia (yet).
Of course I did not know these things were shoddy, or so beloved by certain social classes. I did know it was closely related to the larger Opels, recognising stuff like door handles that the current Astras and Vectras also had. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, Opels of the day were popular among similar demographics as well. Very interesting to see that car from a current perspective. Thanks to the Aussie crowd here!
You’ll have to come here!