VE-VF Commodore: short-back-and-sides for V8 Supercars' all-time greats
The VE and VF were the last Holden Commodore models to be designed and manufactured in Australia. They also share the unique distinction of winning more V8 Supercar races than any other make or model – but they had to downsize to do it.
The VE and VF won a staggering total of 103 races each, making them by far the most successful models in V8 Supercar history. They also played pivotal roles in pushing Holden’s tally in the Australian Touring Car Championship beyond 500 race wins, including a total of seven V8 Supercar championships between them during a decade of service.
The all-new VE Commodore, released in 2006, was known as Holden’s ‘Billion Dollar Baby’ in recognition of the stratospheric 10-figure sum it reportedly cost GM to make.
However, its development budget wasn’t the only big thing. The VE was also a big car in every sense of the word and substantially larger than its VZ predecessor. It was also larger in most dimensions than Ford’s BA-BF Falcon, which the VE would face on the race track when it debuted in 2007.
The VE’s generous proportions presented a challenge in getting it approved for competition, due to the Touring Car Entrants Group of Australia (TEGA) introducing ‘Project Blueprint’ in 2003. This widely praised engineering strategy aligned all key performance criteria between Falcon and Commodore V8 Supercars, to ensure genuine performance parity. Unfortunately the VE was out of bounds.
Project Blueprint: a cut and shut case
Before construction of a racing prototype could be commissioned, agreement had to be reached on how to make the big VE squeeze within TEGA’s smaller ‘blueprint’ in two critical areas – wheelbase and roof height.
The rules mandated a shared wheelbase of 2822mm for Falcon and Commodore, but the VE’s 'Zeta' floor-pan exceeded that figure by 93mm. Designing and constructing a new race-only floor-pan with a 93mm shorter wheelbase was straightforward. The biggest challenge was in determining the visually best way to make the VE’s bodywork match it.
It was as much a philosophical decision as it was a technical one. Any change to the showroom outline or ‘silhouette’ of Falcon and Commodore had always been resisted in V8 Supercars, as NASCAR was considered to have already driven too far down that road. It resulted in important visual links with the showroom products becoming so diluted that US fans started switching off in droves.
Holden and V8 Supercars did not want to make the same mistake, yet it was clear that an unprecedented change to the silhouette would be required. After much thought it was agreed that the easiest and least noticeable way was the tried and tested ‘cut-and-shut’ method, which in this case required shortening the rear door openings by 93mm.
The roof panel was shortened to match, along with the rear doors which were fitted with unique sheet metal skins stamped in small batches by Holden Motor Sport using special low-volume press tooling at Fishermans Bend.
The other VE issue was height, as the roof exceeded the maximum distance allowed between it and the body’s lower sill panel by 83mm. However, lowering the roof by shortening the glass-house pillars in true ‘lead sled’ fashion was not an option. The answer was to instead reduce the thickness of the lower sill panel by 83mm, to achieve the required dimension.
Project Blueprint also mandated identical front and rear body widths for Falcon and Commodore (measured at the axle centrelines) which required some narrowing of the VE nose to suit. The best solution was to design race-only front mudguards made from lightweight composite materials (Ford was allowed to do the same with its BF Falcon update). The composite mudguard was also more pliable and less prone to accident damage.
Thanks to V8 Supercar’s obsession with cost containment, largely through minimising parts redundancy, the VE was designed to carry-over most of the running gear from the out-going VZ including engines, drivetrains, suspensions and braking systems. The VE was also not designed to produce a big leap in performance, as Project Blueprint would ensure that its performance would only ever be on par with its Falcon rival.
Walkinshaw Performance was well advanced with construction of a race prototype by the time the VE road car range was launched in July 2006. When this test ‘mule’ was completed it was then handed over to the Holden Racing Team (HRT) to conduct the VE’s official homologation testing on behalf of Holden.
The VE race prototype had its initial shakedown runs at Holden’s vehicle proving ground at Lang Lang south-east of Melbourne in mid-September, with HRT drivers Mark Skaife and Todd Kelly both running laps on the steeply-banked speed bowl.
The prototype then appeared at the Woomera rocket range in South Australia the following week, where it conducted several days of high speed straight-line testing on the 2.5km runway. These tests were to establish downforce baselines for the VE’s front spoiler/under-tray and boot lid-mounted rear wing, prior to TEGA’s official side-by-side aero tests with a Falcon at the same venue to finalise the VE’s aerodynamics for homologation.
TEGA approval was granted in time for Holden’s all-new racer to take its place on the starting grid for the opening round of the 2007 V8 Supercar championship, the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide in March. Ford had also updated its BA to the latest BF specification, with limited cosmetic and aerodynamic revisions aligned with the VE.
VE Commodore: 2007 to 2012
The new Holden proved to be an instant winner, with Garth Tander’s HSV Dealer Team VE Commodore claiming a narrow two-point victory over Jamie Whincup’s Triple Eight Race Engineering BF Falcon after a gripping 2007 season.
It was an equally competitive battle in 2008, but this time it was Whincup who emerged on top to claim his and Triple Eight’s first of a record seven V8 Supercar championships to date. Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom finished second in a resounding Ford 1-2, with Tander again the highest-placed VE Commodore driver in third.
2009 saw the introduction of Ford’s latest FG Falcon which as planned was immediately competitive with the VE Commodore, setting the stage for a fierce season-long fight dominated by Ford’s Triple Eight (Jamie Whincup/Craig Lowndes) and the Holden Racing Team (Garth Tander/Will Davison).
These pre-eminent teams won 22 of the season’s 26 point-scoring races between them. HRT won the prestigious Phillip Island 500/Bathurst 1000 double, but Whincup secured his second consecutive drivers’ title and first for the FG Falcon in a dream debut.
However, despite Ford’s resounding success with Triple Eight, in 2009 they announced a shock split that would see the Queensland-based team swapping sides to run factory-backed VE Commodores from 2010.
Even so, the FG Falcon narrowly won a second drivers’ title that year thanks to Dick Johnson Racing and the dogged consistency of James Courtney, who had to wait until the final round to claim his first (and so far only) driver’s championship.
Reigning champ Whincup, now driving a Triple Eight VE Commodore, finished a close runner-up to Courtney while Lowndes reunited with former HRT team-mate Mark Skaife in the second Triple Eight Commodore to win the Phillip Island 500/Bathurst 1000 double.
The dominant Whincup and Lowndes finished 1-2 in the 2011 and 2012 championships, with the highest-placed Ford on both occasions being FPR’s FG Falcon driven by Mark Winterbottom. VE Commodores also won both Bathurst 1000s held during this period.
VF Commodore: 2013 to 2017
2013 saw the introduction of Car of the Future (COTF). It was a logical evolution of Project Blueprint with the primary goals being to attract more manufacturers into the sport, ensure even closer performance parity between rival marques and make the cars lighter, safer, stronger and cheaper to build/service/repair with the use of as many generic or ‘control’ parts as possible.
The category’s founding principles of 5.0 litre V8/rear-wheel drive/four-door sedan were retained, but all cars regardless of make or model would now share a common platform or ‘control chassis’ featuring driver safety improvements, independent rear suspension and a six-speed transaxle.
The wheel diameter also increased from 17 to 18 inches to allow an AP Racing control brake package and engine choices extended beyond the traditional Ford and GM two-valves-per-cylinder pushrod V8s, with allowances for DOHC and four-valves-per-cylinder if fitted in production.
Two COTF prototypes, based on the FG Falcon and VE Commodore, were unveiled at the final round of the 2011 championship. However, by the time this new breed of V8 Supercar was ready to race at the start of the 2013 season, with V8-powered Nissan Altimas and Mercedes Benz E63 AMGs joining the Falcons and Commodores, the Car of the Future name had been changed to ‘New Generation’ and Holden had updated to the latest VF model.
The VF was largely a cosmetic update of the VE, with the racing version’s bodywork and aerodynamics package designed by Triple Eight’s technical director Ludo Lacroix.
The most noticeable difference was a rear wing mounted on large end-plates. This was a major departure from established Holden thinking, given that all Commodore V8 Supercars had used central-mounted wings since the introduction of the VR model in 1995.
However, Triple Eight had identified a shortage of rear downforce in the VE compared to the FG Falcon, which Lacroix also designed when the team was aligned with Ford and used end-plates. This may have explained why the Frenchman adopted a similar wing design for the VF.
The new Holden racer proved highly effective with four-time champion Whincup defending his crown in 2013, claiming a fifth title with a record-breaking 13 pole positions and 11 wins from 36 races. Lowndes finished runner-up to his team-mate for the third year in a row, with FPR’s Will Davison the highest placed FG Falcon runner in third.
With Volvo joining the battle in 2014, running a V8-powered S60 with Garry Rogers Motorsport under the Volvo Polestar Racing banner, rivals for Ford and Holden had never been greater in number.
However, it made no difference to Jamie Whincup in his Triple Eight VF Commodore as he stormed to a record-breaking sixth championship victory, surpassing the previous record of five titles achieved by only three drivers - Mark Skaife, Dick Johnson and Pete Geoghegan.
Ford hit back in 2015 with Mark Winterbottom claiming his first long-awaited driver’s championship in his Prodrive Racing Australia FG X Falcon. Triple Eight’s new Kiwi recruit Shane van Gisbergen returned the VF Commodore to the top spot in 2016, though, winning eight races to secure his first championship.
Gen2
In 2017, the VF Commodore’s last V8 Supercar season, there was an evolution of the New Generation regulations. These revised ‘Gen2’ rules allowed an even wider choice of body shapes and engines beyond the existing four-door sedans and 5.0 litre V8s. The category’s name was also changed to ‘Supercars’ to push the message it was now catering for more than just V8 engines.
Holden was the first manufacturer to exploit the new rules by commissioning development of a GM-sourced 3.6 litre twin-turbocharged V6, as part of a proposed across-the-board switch to the latest Opel-sourced ZB Commodore race car in 2018. However, The General shelved these plans in early 2018.
So, with Volvo Polestar Racing having withdrawn and Erebus replacing its Mercedes fleet with VF Commodores, the first year of Gen2 in 2017 was a three-way fight between the FG X Falcon, VF Commodore and Nissan Altima.
Whincup and DJR Team Penske Ford driver Scott McLaughlin were two of five drivers who went into the final round with a chance of winning the title. McLaughlin’s Falcon FG X was first across the finish line in the deciding race, but a post-race time penalty imposed on the Kiwi for a driving infringement handed the race win and a new-record seventh championship to Whincup.
For 2018 Holden switched to the new ZB Commodore, which in road-going form was effectively an imported Opel Insignia wearing Holden badges. And so ended the long racing life of the Aussie designed and manufactured Commodore, which first hit the race track in 1980 with the original VB model and remained in touring car racing continuously for an incredible 37 years.
