My lovingly restored 1957 FE Holden Special 'George' was originally bought by my Grandpa, John Elliott, new in 1957. He later sold it to my great-grandpa, Gwynne ‘George’ Elliott, in the early 60s, and he drove it until the mid-90s. It was then garaged before he went into a nursing home in 2005, when it was bequeathed to me. In 2008, after my great-grandpa passed away, I began restoring the FE for my Year 10 International Baccalaureate Diploma Personal Project.
My dad, Anthony, and I pulled apart the exterior, then stripped the paint, as it had bad surface rust. We also replaced parts of the door pillars and the bottom of the doors, as well as doing the lead loading, undercoat and wet rubbing. Dad taught me step by step and I did as much as I could. Only the more difficult bodywork and the two-pack Corsair Tan and Castle Grey was done by Dad’s mate’s crash-repair shop. Of course, things like chrome-plating we couldn’t do, so I went along to the workshop to watch and document the processes, a requirement for my 40,000-word thesis and photographic journal.
Since restoration 'George' has been featured in Classic Car Magazine, Street Machine and won the Holden Dream Cruise Show and Shine. My husband, Matt, and I enjoy driving her around the country side when the weather is fine, and aren't afraid of taking her a fair way from home.
Catch us around the Southern Adelaide and Hills areas.
(Thanks to Street Machine Magazine's Carly Dale for the text)
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Comments
DrJohnWright
The VL Commodore assumes a more important role as history rolls on. It was the first sixpack Holden to use a ‘foreign’ engine and the only Commodore not to be powered by a GM engine. The turbo six easily outperformed the lusty old 5.0-Litre V8. And it was a very clever facelift which kept the first generation ‘small’ Commodore looking fresh after seven and a half years. In this respect it did a better job than the XF Falcon, launched just five years after the XD. (I remember designer David Bentley predicting in 1979 that the Commodore would age more gracefully than the XD and he was prescient in this.)
Pudelspringer
New Zealand spec VLs also offered a 2 litre 6 cylinder Nissan motor. A huge improvement over the starfire 4 cylinder POS
DrJohnWright
That period of Commodore versus Falcon was typified by Holden having the sausage but Ford getting the sizzle better. The VL was severely let down by cheap and nasty fittings and a poor finish. Your point, jakolerodave, is a good one. It's very hard to persuade anyone to buy a car other than the one they're thinking of. When I had my one-hour motoring program on 2GB, people would ask: which do you think is better, John, the Falcon or the Commodore. In the end, I found it was better to ask them what they thought and then agree!
jakolerodave
Interesting read, thank you. My dear old dad had a VL Calais, dark blue from memory. It was very nice to drive but the interior looked cheap to me and I was not keen on the way that over a short time the plastic external trim simply fell off. Anyway .. a guy in my dads town fell in love with it and kept asking to buy it. His persistence eventually paid off and dad sold it to him. A few weeks later dad heard that the guy had lost it on a bridge over the Mary River and she was totaled. That was dads last Holden - his loyalty had not paid off and he was sick of Commodores that felt cheap. We tried to talk him into a VR Aclaim but it was not to be.
Pete888
Hi Doc,
I can remember all the fanfare going on at my local Holden dealer when the VL made its debut. They had a video playing that oozed at the smoothness of the new engine. It had a 50c piece balanced in the cam cover as they engine was revved. My Dad had 2 VL company cars: a white Executive at first & then a metallic mint Berlina after a promotion to Sales Manager. I got to drive both of them & compared to his XF Fairmont, they had nothing down low but once you got them moving, a really enthusiastic driveline.
Speaking of drivelines, the unleaded carby 5.0 V8 was a shocking engine when compared to Ford's 4.1 EFI in my view. One more solitary kW & only 2 additional Nm! Even the HDT Group A could only muster 134kW. Disgraceful.
freeway64
I can only read with envy everyone on here with VL Turbos or Calais - the majority of us with company cars were relegated to the base models. The three Commodores I had were a VC, VH and VL. The VL was the best of them, but as far as I was concerned, all of them stood up to the pounding only a company car can take. I don't remember any major faults with any of them, with just under 100,000 kms up on each within 3 or 4 years. Yes, the fit and finish of the VL wasn't quite up to scratch, but the same could be said for the equivalent Falcons we had on the fleet. Ampol being a proudly Australian company meant the choice of car had to be (or appear to be) Australian. Most company cars that I was involved with stretched from VB to VN and XD to EA. It was the VN and EA that caused most problems, but by then the company was changing from the standard fleet Holden or Falcon to an employee package, where they could choose what they wanted within a certain price group. Six cylinder Magnas and Camrys started to appear, followed by Honda Accords and Nissan Skylines. I'm neither Holden or Ford biassed - I can see the good and bad in all of them; I simply chose the smaller Commodore as I didn't have a family and felt the VC was (slightly) more sophisticated than the XD.
Motown1
Thanks John, While I really liked the look of the VL Calais - with the eye lids, I was never a fan of the VL. Too plasticky and cheap looking for me. The strength of the body structure left much to be desired too. Still, an original Turbo , Calais sedan or wagon is an interesting car these days.Interestingly, when I was managing Product Planning for the Commodore VX program I ensured we had differentiation on both Berlina and Calais ala Fairmont and Ghia as opposed to the previous Holden approach of only differentiating Calais. Holden found it was not nearly as profitable to spread all the additional investment over Calais only volume. Adding Berlina to the mix provided substantial payback in terms of sales and profit.
NewVLT
Thanks for the great read John. Being a little biased it's always interesting to hear what others have to say about the VL, especially people that were there back in the day. I guess I'm in pretty rare company having owned an SL Turbo from new, and having purchased a few others over the past 29 years. Now at 290,000km's, reliability-wise my original VL has been an absolute dream with nothing more than brake pads (apart from standard service items) required until it's 120,000km service. Even now the only major replacement part in the engine bay has been the alternator. Maybe I got lucky with the cylinder head that I heard so many people have had problems with.
As for the body, well that's a different issue. The paint, as you mentioned, was horrible from Day 1. It lasted about four years before I had the car repainted with surface rust appearing on the bonnet and roof. Noteworthy at that time was the usual windscreen rust that had already started, no thanks to the screen spacers they used at the factory. Strangely, another VL I own was built 250 cars later than my original car (so basically the same day, or the next at the latest) and speaking to the first owner he said exactly the same thing. The very rare factory black paint had lasted about four years before coming out in white patches everywhere. Holden must have had the work experience kid in the paint booth that week.
Apart from the very 1980's panel gaps and fragile exterior plastics the rest of the car has hung in there pretty well. As an interstate hauler back in the late eighties there wasn't much that could touch the turbo's on the highway. Things got a little skittish in the rear end with the FE2 suspension and mid-corner bumps but I got used to it's bad habits. Another in my stable is a very early non-FE2 equipped turbo car and the understeer has to be experienced to be believed. FE2 was only introduced across the board on the turbo models sometime in September 1986, a few months after that engine option was introduced in the previous July.
The Calais wagon was always interesting, and is another in my collection. With 200 Option A9Y's being built between February and April 1988 they were a nice last hurrah for the small bodied wagons and in original form still look stunning. I completely agree with your comments about them being slow movers though. Mine was built in February and sat around at one Melbourne dealership before finally being sold as a new car by another dealer in August 1988. Quite a lump of money to have sitting around your yard for seven months I'd imagine.
MarkOastler
Great yarn Doc. Always enjoy your insights and the great images you find. We can really appreciate the visual contrast between the last 'HDT' Group A and the first 'Walkinshaw' Group A in this story. And I must say Uncle Tom's version - although heavily criticised at launch - just looks better and better with each passing year. Nostalgia is a powerful thing!
DrJohnWright
Glynnie, I agree about the VL Turbo and the other Aussie car I would rate as its equal is the XE Fairmont Ghia ESP 5.8.
Bullit
Back in the day I owned a VC SLE 4.2, a VH Group Three, a Group A engined manual 5.0 VK Calais and a VL Calais Turbo auto. I was not and am not a Holden man. But these cars were the perfect blend of big motors in smaller cars with handling that was so good you could chuck them around and they would never bite you. In the day, nothing could live with them on twisty highways. Utterly addictive. Just a shame that the build quality just got worse and worse in those years. Here is the list of probs I had with the Calais Turbo in just 11 months ownership and which drove me away from Holden forever - cracks in tops of both rear doors, water leaks in through both tail lights, three stereo failures (at which point the dealer gave me 300 bucks and said, go fit something aftermarket), recall to replace front brake calipers, recall to replace wiring harness to auto trans (fires were reported), recall to replace steering rack, dead hotwire air mass sensor (which took 8 weeks to identify and fix), three sets of rear wheel bearings in under 10,000km, cruise control that shut down when you turned the wipers on, central locking that wouldn't lock and had to be totally rebuilt. The best bits of the car were the faultless engine and trans...which of course were Nissan engineered and supplied....In the end I just had to give up on them when I discovered that a second hand low k BMW E28 3.5 could be had for the same money and that nothing fell off it. But I still remember my VC-VLs very fondly for the way they drove.
CHASTE
Thanks from me also Dr John. I love these stories. My memories with the VL are also mixed. The first we drove did not leave a good impression but they definitely got better. By the end of the run in 88 they were a great car. I loved the Calais front end and worked with a guy that had a Calais Turbo wagon. I begged him to sell it to me every month. I also liked the push button hold overdrive. I think it is a good idea. Current cars drop into overdrive too quickly. Those Calais wheels were nice too. So much easier to keep clean than my old VH alloys. Overall I think they were a good car for their time. In my former job the Turbo's used to get a really hard time and stood up well. They were all fitted with timers for cooling but no major problems. It was a good test of a car. A good Turbo now represents good street cred and value for money performance.
LX355
Thank you Dr John for another great read. I think it was Australian Muscle Car magazine that featured an article on the 1990 Bathurst VL's were able to reach 9000 rpm to create enough power to deal with the turbo Fords and Nissan's. I'm pretty sure that the 5 speed manual gearbox behind the Nissan six was also a Nissan item and not a Holden box.
Thanks Mal