My(company) VZ Crummydore!!!

DougM · 16-05-2007, 10:02 PM

Hi guys.

I thought I would do a quick review of my new VZ Crummydore company vehicle. This is the first Commodore I have driven over a longer period since the VN. I know the VE is the new thing on the block but let me say that having the same running gear(V6 4spd auto) it must be a piece of CRUD!!!

I know I may sound harsh, but as my Holden mates(?????) are so proud of their sales and racing achievements(????) I'm going to pick it to bits......It doesn't help the commodore's case after stepping out of my previous BA XR6t!!!!

Most of my complaints are basic but I feel relevant for someone buying an average family/company car......As that is where the volume is......

1/ Fuel consumption in the suburbs is no better than my Edited XR6t!!!!! I average 14-14.5 litres!!! I checked with the fleet manager as we have 15 of them and he said they are all similar!!!! And your talking 185kw against 300kw for my XR. How the hell Holden claims better for the V8 is a mystery??

2/ Auto is atrocious!!!! There is a lot of slip between gears . My borgwarner in the XP is honestly better.......My wife's AU drives much better.....Again, I've asked the manager and he says that's normal and that I'm too fussy...I said no, just a Ford driver!!! I keep it in performance mode so that it's not as bad

3/ Torque(lack of)....When I first drove it, it felt like we were moving along quickly, until the next set of lights and an old camry stayed along beside me....No bull.......The engine revs to redine easily but the car isn't going as fast as the engine seems to be.....Again, under normal driving(not racing) our humble AU has more bottom end is much easier to drive quickly .....

4/ Noise.........Alloy tech sounds like a bucket of bolts just like that VN did way back when!!!! What does help it is the better NVH of the newer car.....

5/ Quality.......5 of the cars I've been in all have rattles in the doors,window glass,suspension, exhaust, boot etc.

6/ Trip meter(distance to empty) jumps up and down by 10-20km increments.....Not good if fuel is low......I've seen it go from 10km to go to 50km and then back down to 5km in the space of 6km's of driving.....Again the other fleet cars do the same....Neither my AU or BA do this....

7/ Fuel Cap(Pedantic I know)....The fuel cap has nowhere to clip on while refuelling so you have to put it on the roof or the ground......

8/ ABS. Comes on too easily and it sounds and feels like gravel in between the disc and rotor......

9/ Smell.......When you drive it a little bit hard(not racing) it gets Fumey....The brakes smell and the auto smells.....Let me add that the XR6t copped a hiding and it never was this bad.......

As you can see I'm having a right royal ***** about "Australia's" favourite car!!! How the hell Holden sells so many is beyond me.....On a positive note, my company has 5 BF's on trial and we are slowly replacing the Crummydore's with Fords!!!!!!! I get mine in 2 months.........

I hope I haven't bored you all with my whinge.....I don't pretend that Ford's are perfect......I had some warranty issue's with my BA....But they were all fixed and the thing is a pleasure to drive......My Ford's may not be perfect but they are much better than the Holdens we have in our fleet that's for certain!!!!!

See ya's

uranium_death · 16-05-2007, 10:52 PM

I will say that Commodores are not that bad. You're just driven a really bad one.

Out VTII has terrible auto. That's a given.
I have no problem with the noise of the engine. Rattles are non-existent to minimal on our VTII. Our trip meter works fine and the change of 10-20km increments is due to how the engine is running. When we drive a long distance with little-no stops, fuel efficiency picks up. When we engage in suburban driving, it drops and fluctuates.
ABS has never come on in our car in 7 years. That's an issue with your car...not all Holdens.
Hold the fuel cap with your hand. It isn't that hard!
No smells on our car.

As I said, yours probably gets driven harder than our VTII and has probably done more kms (ours hit 80,000km last week) but ours has been looked after well so I am happy with the Commodore, although I would prefer a Falcon.

So just ride it out and look forward to your replacement

Aeron · 16-05-2007, 10:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DougM

5/ Quality.......5 of the cars I've been in all have rattles in the doors,window glass...

Yeh, my VX has that. Other than that its a good car.

yift · 16-05-2007, 10:59 PM

dougm i got a dunnywhore work ute and i couldnt agree more! best part about it is i drove it with distance to empty 0km for another 78km before the fuel pump was cutting in and out!

DougM · 16-05-2007, 11:39 PM

We have a fleet of 15 VZ's and most are performing like mine.....

It's not a really bad car but it is no where near as good as they're made out to be.....My car has 70,000 k's where my wife's AU has 100,000.......Most of our cars are driven by middle aged reps who drive normally(not revheads).....

Yes I am being fussy, but only because all the Holden driver's I come across rip Fords to pieces......

Our 5 BF's have similar km's and have had good reports....

My fuel comparison is for suburban driving as both my Fords and the Commodore spend 90% of their time there......My 300kw XR6 would get 9.5-10litres on a long highway trip........

akluck87 · 16-05-2007, 11:51 PM

Gday!

I might have a bit of complaint session with you also, lol.

1. My old VS (is getting traded on a AUIII Ghia on the w/e) has a horrible gear slipping problem, I was told it was a "trait of VR-VS's".

2. The avg fuel I have had, was between 18-20 in town and about 6-8 highway driving.

3. The VS also had a shudder or choking as it may be called, I was also told that is was a "trait"

4. Quality. Dont get me started brother

I have been thru 3 different door trims for the driver's side because it is cheap cardboard trims, as with Falcons, it is moulded specifically from carbon or some such thing. The door knobs are pathetic in mine, the red caps on the knob break too easily, and I have been 3 also.

5. Abs. Well, the braking in my old VS was very very slow to respond in traffic, even had one accident "rear-ended a bloke at lights" not entirely brakes fault, i was wrong some.

6. Smell, well yes I can empathize there, The exhaust smells out my garage in no time.

7. Trip meter, well mine is the old Level 3 cluster with 3 trip comp windows. One of the windows is sloping a fair bit. Possibly when the idiot who had it last messed with the mileage and was too stoopid to fix it properly.

But yeah mate, I am going back to a ford, because they are just better cars to drive. Fool me for buying a holden.

Good having a ***** session in conjunction with ya. Good luck with your BF, I love them, and you will too dude. Take it easy. Andrew.

MITCHAY · 17-05-2007, 12:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by uranium_death

I will say that Commodores are not that bad. You're just driven a really bad one.

Out VTII has terrible auto. That's a given.
I have no problem with the noise of the engine. Rattles are non-existent to minimal on our VTII. Our trip meter works fine and the change of 10-20km increments is due to how the engine is running. When we drive a long distance with little-no stops, fuel efficiency picks up. When we engage in suburban driving, it drops and fluctuates.
ABS has never come on in our car in 7 years. That's an issue with your car...not all Holdens.
Hold the fuel cap with your hand. It isn't that hard!
No smells on our car.

As I said, yours probably gets driven harder than our VTII and has probably done more kms (ours hit 80,000km last week) but ours has been looked after well so I am happy with the Commodore, although I would prefer a Falcon.

So just ride it out and look forward to your replacement

Yep our VTII has been pretty good to except the button on the shifter has popped out of place and is hanging on by the spring. A to B it does the job fine and that's all you can ask. Very few problems in whole scheme of things.

As for the auto sucking **** (and it really sucks!), well the majority of people who buy them don't exactly want to participate in traffic light grand prix now do they? I've told my mother how bad the auto is but you know what her response is?

"It does the job just fine" Well I bet that's the response you will get from the MAJORITY or average person which it is built for.

I'd hate to break it to you but we are the minority! While there is no business reason to improve it, they won't.

Perfect example is the VT to VZ shape. Yes it was old but it sold truckloads so unless it's broke don't fix it.

Same goes for above mentioned dinosaur auto box

:

XR8-260 · 17-05-2007, 12:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yift

dougm i got a dunnywhore work ute and i couldnt agree more! best part about it is i drove it with distance to empty 0km for another 78km before the fuel pump was cutting in and out!

Some Falcons also have this problem too afaik. So I guess we should single out Holden in this regard.

17-05-2007, 01:18 AM

Hmm i've got to disagree, VZ's aren't a bad car.

Think someones a bit one-eyed :P

flukey77 · 17-05-2007, 07:10 AM

I'm with you DougM, my dad drove a VZ SV6 belonging to friends and yeh, he would agree with you that they arent a bar on our AU. In fact my dad raved on for like half an hour to me about all that our AU did better. The three things he noticed most were the gutless engine (nearly had to flatten the sucker to get it moving), the lifeless steering (no where near as direct and with none of the feel of our AU), and the gearbox like you mentioned. But to its credit we are comparing it with the AU, which despite its looks I reckon is a brilliant drivers car, must be that fantastic steering feel.

castek · 17-05-2007, 07:13 AM

i drove my bosses VE berlina, and i have to admit, they are rubbish.
there is tons of slack in the accelerator pedal(petal), it feels so cheaply made. i really dont want to spend $50000 on a car made from plastic. as stated above, rattles get annoying, billion dollar baby? they got ripped off. Traction control comes on way late lol, it was pouring rain, i went around a roundabout and it got sideways before anything happened, and then i lost total control of the car (not spin out, it wouldnt respond to any of my inputs)
i like the dash, its a cool layout, and it is very comfortable. i was doing 60k's on a bumpy road and couldnt realy feel a thing.

depends what your after really. i know i'm not a fan.

Note: i am in no way biased, i have owned commodores, fords, and now a subaru.

Rodp · 17-05-2007, 08:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3

Some Falcons also have this problem too afaik. So I guess we should single out Holden in this regard.

It's better than the other way around. Our company prefers Ford and we have a pool car that e-mails fly when someone uses it (and it promptly runs out of fuel showing 75km to empty).

Never had that problem with my BA-XR8. I've had it into single digits but am not willing to do a Kramer on it. :P

BadMac · 17-05-2007, 08:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DougM

Hi guys.

1/ Fuel consumption in the suburbs is no better than my Edited XR6t!!!!! I average 14-14.5 litres!!! I checked with the fleet manager as we have 15 of them and he said they are all similar!!!! And your talking 185kw against 300kw for my XR. How the hell Holden claims better for the V8 is a mystery??

2/ Auto is atrocious!!!! There is a lot of slip between gears . My borgwarner in the XP is honestly better.......My wife's AU drives much better.....Again, I've asked the manager and he says that's normal and that I'm too fussy...I said no, just a Ford driver!!! I keep it in performance mode so that it's not as bad

3/ Torque(lack of)....When I first drove it, it felt like we were moving along quickly, until the next set of lights and an old camry stayed along beside me....No bull.......The engine revs to redine easily but the car isn't going as fast as the engine seems to be.....Again, under normal driving(not racing) our humble AU has more bottom end is much easier to drive quickly .....

4/ Noise.........Alloy tech sounds like a bucket of bolts just like that VN did way back when!!!! What does help it is the better NVH of the newer car.....

5/ Quality.......5 of the cars I've been in all have rattles in the doors,window glass,suspension, exhaust, boot etc.

6/ Trip meter(distance to empty) jumps up and down by 10-20km increments.....Not good if fuel is low......I've seen it go from 10km to go to 50km and then back down to 5km in the space of 6km's of driving.....Again the other fleet cars do the same....Neither my AU or BA do this....

7/ Fuel Cap(Pedantic I know)....The fuel cap has nowhere to clip on while refuelling so you have to put it on the roof or the ground......

8/ ABS. Comes on too easily and it sounds and feels like gravel in between the disc and rotor......

9/ Smell.......When you drive it a little bit hard(not racing) it gets Fumey....The brakes smell and the auto smells.....Let me add that the XR6t copped a hiding and it never was this bad.......

As you can see I'm having a right royal ***** about "Australia's" favourite car!!! How the hell Holden sells so many is beyond me.....On a positive note, my company has 5 BF's on trial and we are slowly replacing the Crummydore's with Fords!!!!!!! I get mine in 2 months.........

I hope I haven't bored you all with my whinge.....I don't pretend that Ford's are perfect......I had some warranty issue's with my BA....But they were all fixed and the thing is a pleasure to drive......My Ford's may not be perfect but they are much better than the Holdens we have in our fleet that's for certain!!!!!

See ya's

1/ This has everything to do with the way you drive. You say its a company car and compare it to your own car. I have a BF XR6 company and I can't get anywhere near the claims for economy, is that the cars fault. No its the way I drive it (On/Off). Do I drive my personal car like that. No way.

2/ Auto was good compared to its peers at the time. Is it as good as the upgraded 4 speed in BA, NO, is it as good as ZF, nothing is as good. Is it crap. No its just an auto, put it in gear and drive, its not a performance manual for god sakes.

3/ Who cares, it has enough to get it moving. Its not a V8 (or I6T) so why expect it to feel like one.

4/ Its a V6, it will never be as smooth (or as good) as an I6. Problem is that the I6 creates packaging difficulties which is forcing manufacturers to move to V configurations. An I6 is inherantly well balanced, A V6 is two 3 cylinders (and if you've every owned a 3 cylinder you will know what I mean).

5/ They all do, I don't think I have every had a car without rattles, even from brand new.

6/ Are you sure you really drive it all the time. The "trip computer" changes from 10km steps (I thought it was 5km) to 1Km steps at 40Km to go. So when you have less than 40Km's remaining it swaps to show distance in 1Km steps. I do agree that it jumps around though. I have seen it go from 35 to 7 and back to 20 in 30 seconds while idling in traffic.

7/8/9/ No opinion.

You know I could do the reverse review for my XR6. When I first got it I was stoked, loved it. Then as I drove it things showed up. Rattles, wooly handling with 4 adults at 100km in twisty areas, failed 6 speed, dead feeling in steering wheel on motorways at straight ahead, paint on bonnet needed a respray after 8 months.

Then I made a fatal mistake. I drove the new VE (as well as BF2 F6 and Territory Turbo Ghia ) as I was in the market for a new personal car.

Now I swap between the 2 cars on a daily basis and you really notice the faults with the BF. On the postive side of that ledger, the BF does still have some things better than VE i.e. ZF (in manual mode, in auto the are very similar) , front nose area, instrument panel, rear seats. But I now look forward to Orion as my company car it will be due for upgrade just after release (September 08), so I will be able to really try it out before I reach the point of swapping my own car again (hopefully for a F6), although I look forward to Orion F6 versus VF commodore as I think we will be spoiled for choice.

Oh the joy of not wearing brand blinkers. I can have the best of both (all?) worlds. The competition keeps both brands honest and we the buyers are the winners.

mcflux · 17-05-2007, 09:02 AM

My old man's previous work car was a VZ. The interior was pretty good & the car seemed to be screwed together tightly, but the alloytech was gutless (and rev-happy in 1st) and the 4 speed auto was crap. It always had a slight electrical smell (like using an angle grinder) upon startup, and the engine sounds like a well behaved vacuum cleaner.

In contrast the BA he had before that was far better in almost every aspect, apart from the cardboardy trim that's on the doors & dash.

His current 380 is the surprise car out of the lot, its launch and most of its driving characteristics are WAY better than both the VZ and the BA, but I'm not a fan of the interior at all (trying too hard to be all futuristic & space-agey) and find the seats a little uncomfortable. Also, the FWD dynamics still pop up from time to time, like inside wheelspin when pulling out quickly onto a main road.

EdFairmontGhia · 17-05-2007, 11:13 AM

I was lucky/unlucky enough to drive around for a few months in a vy sv6, which was supposed to have all the bells and whistles of a sportier holden. I found the tiptronic gearing to lag quite a bit, (even though this was the first car i had been in with the tiptronic), but this was confirmed after taking a spin in Ghia5L EB with a home made tiptronic which seemed alot more responsive.... Maybe i'm biased or maybe i expected too much from the (back then 03) new holden????

TZENU · 17-05-2007, 11:29 AM

My fiancee has a VZ Wagon as a company car..
The trip meter problem is the same in hers... one minute you have 15km left in your tank then the next minute you have 0km...drive it a bit longer and its back up to 20km...
The first time i drove it, i was out gippsland way when i had apparently 0km left to empty... boy did i **** myself... i thought this is going to be very interesting at 3am,
walking to a servo somewhere between Bairnsdale and Lakes!
But now im used to it.. so when it says 0km to empty i put the volume on the radio up and ignore that annoying beep!

vztrt · 17-05-2007, 11:37 AM

I like some of the comments about steering and brakes in this thread because if you jump on a commodore forum you'll find thats what they complain about on the Falcons.
I found a big difference in the brakes when I jumped from the VX to the BA but thats the way they have been designed. But I found the Falcons ABS to kick in way to early (when my ex could get ABS to enable at 20km/h I knew that was a bit stuffed). But I liked the steering and handling better in the XR when I got it but now that it's done 70,000k's the car is swaying to much and the ride is starting to become less comfortable (or I'm becoming more picky).But the XR has been a good car to me and I have never regretted buying it. And if you actually think the 4sp auto's in the Falcons are better than the ones in the Commodore than I'll laugh at you as they suck! If I couldn't get a manual Falcon than I would never have bought one.

Guess what both cars have their good and bad points they are as crap as each other. You just choose what problems you want your car to have.

mcflux · 17-05-2007, 12:07 PM

The main downside to our BTRs is that damn tall 1st gear...

uranium_death · 17-05-2007, 12:21 PM

From reading many people's reviews, it's good to see some people are getting a level head.
The fact is that Ford and Holden both have their problems, but both are decent cars and comes down to which brand you prefer in many cases.

The fact remains that almost any car you get, you could pick out similar faults.

Last point...just because this is a Ford Forum, doesn't mean we sit back and bag Holden for the sake of it. I would take one over a Toyota anyday.

needaXYGT · 17-05-2007, 12:40 PM

Quote:

9/ Smell.......When you drive it a little bit hard(not racing) it gets Fumey....The brakes smell and the auto smells.....Let me add that the XR6t copped a hiding and it never was this bad.......

if its new than you could expect these smells!

Matty4 · 17-05-2007, 12:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DougM

Hi guys.

...snip...

7/ Fuel Cap(Pedantic I know)....The fuel cap has nowhere to clip on while refuelling so you have to put it on the roof or the ground......

Our VZ exec's that we have at work have the fuel cap on a tether inside the fuel door, so it just hangs there. Guess why this is only on Exec's, anyone who actually owned one privately wouldn't let this happen to their car.

I agree with most of your post too DougM, but I can't compare a fleet car to a private car, they are looked after so differently from each other.

mcnamg · 17-05-2007, 01:07 PM

My brother in law has a VTII Berlina. Well I should say had as it broke down last week and he had to pull over and well it just caught fire and now its a melted piece of metal.

I have driven the car a few times and the accelerator feels very heavy no response at slow speed and the brakes were very poor needed a lot of pressure to get them to do anything. The car also had a habit of turning off when you went around a roundabout for no apparent reason. Holden reckoned they couldnt find the fault. Then after the car did its impression of a BBQ they said it was an electrical fault caused by the steering.

The car was immacualtely kept clean by my brother and serviced at holden regularly and was not thrashed yet it rattled and squeaked and the panel fit was terrible

XR8-260 · 17-05-2007, 04:07 PM

I drove a VE SV6. It's got a bit more power than the VZ executive, but below 6000rpm they both produce about the same power and torque. I found the alloytec perfectly tractable for everyday driving. The 4.0L I6 is obviously stronger down low but the 3.6L wasn't bad.

RUQ1KA · 17-05-2007, 04:36 PM

I own a manual 01 VX and i have personally owned an 99 AU1 sedan (and my dad has owned an 98 AU1 wagon for 5 years from new)

In comparison I would say that the AU was a better built car, We never had any problems with any of our AU's, my dad's AU left us stranded once and that was due to ethanol or something in the pertol tank

My VX has done about the same amount of Km's as my old AU (approx: 180,000) but the wear in the VX is really showing.. It has many of the problems listed above,

-It has rattles in the drivers door/window,

-Engine sounds sick - but mechanics and holden insist its fine?

-Trip meter and fuel gauge play games - i drive it says 300dte, park it for a bit get back in to drive again and it says 90dte WTF? (also the fuel guage tends to stay in the full position for over 150km's)

-The starter motor seems to work slow compared to the AU

Plus many more...

Although the car does have its good bits as well I like the handling, it sticks to the road much better and i feel more confident throwing it into corners, with the AU when it was wet it used to slide around like a crazy ****

As the AU was auto and the VX is manual I cant make a comparison there, I only have one small problem with the trans though, sometimes it doesn't want to go into reverse, you have to shift it to 1st and try go into reverse again a few times before it goes in - but this car being my first manual i dont know if its normal or not

All in all i would prefer to have kept the AU but hey watcha gonna do?
At the moment i'm looking at selling the VX or trading up for the Orion when it comes out

Dezza · 17-05-2007, 04:52 PM

I drove a VX wagon as a work car about 5 months ago, and it wasn't bad but there were a few criticisms. The engine sounded rough, and the auto wasn't the smoothest (but much smoother than the dying auto that used to be in my EA). The power seemed OK but nowhere near as good as the BA workute I also used. I hated the stalk mounted cruise control. I much prefer the buttons. As for the rattles, I didn't really notice any, but driving an EA full of rattles, I've learnt to ignore all weird noises. Overall, I wouldn't buy one, but they aren't too bad a car.

DougM · 17-05-2007, 05:08 PM

As I said at the beginning of my post, I am being picky because Fords often get crucified for small faults and Holden can do no wrong......Our fleet of cars are well looked after and are OUR responsibilty to maintain and look after......I drive the Commodore normally as I know it is not a race car.......Actually the Commodores box is at its worst when driving slowly!!!!!! My XR was a company car aswell.... I choose to compare both directly because I have driven both under very similar conditions as have all our other fleet cars, both Fords and Holdens......I drive my own wagon(au) ni different to the vz.

I'm not a one eyed Ford fan as I have owned Japanese cars for Ten years up until 4 years ago when we bought the AU Wagon for the family........My previous Pathfinder was flawless and it copped a hiding offroad.......No shakes and rattles. sold wuth 190000k's. It was followed by a Suzuki Grand Vitara V6.....I remember every review of the Vitara's V6 complained it was rough and noisey and unacceptable for modern times.....This was 1998....The alloytech is by far a more crude animal and yet the same journo"s don't complain so much........The Vitara was sold with 160000k's and the only issue we had was 1 oil seal......It still drove like new.

I bought the Au at the time as only Ford and Holden make such vehicle.....They're both reasonable cars and both have good and bad points......All I'd like to see a
is more balanced reviewing and criticism of both......Holden is definately not the be all and end all !!!!!!!!!!

uranium_death · 17-05-2007, 05:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DougM

All I'd like to see is a more balanced reviewing and criticism of both......Holden is definately not the be all and end all !!!!!!!!!! Purple Monkey Dishwasher

If you can convince the media to adopt this approach, then i owe you a slab!

Ryan · 17-05-2007, 05:38 PM

Yeah just sounds like a lemon too me.

One of the biggest heaps of crap I've ever driven, was a mate's old VL. Rattles and creaks over every bump, even on a smooth road, gutless as *****. Even a 1.3L Charade could've beat it, but then my VL is in an entire different class, but I dare say it's not perfect.

ThoR_ · 18-05-2007, 03:03 AM

Yep there krap! VX commodore was the last good one i rekon!

stevz · 18-05-2007, 07:43 AM

While I agree there are some valid points in this thread, the majority of if is exaggerated and blown right out of proportion while some of it is just outright BS. From my experiences with them, the VZ aren't a bad car at all. Far from it.