If you’ve ever been to Australia, chances are that you’ve seen the Holden Ute and Ford Falcon Ute on the road in practically every city there is in Australia. I was told by my Australian side of the family that these vehicles are popular these days because of tax breaks when registered as “work vehicles”. Whatever the reason for its popularity, they are pretty cool looking vehicles and I could see it being practical for some people.
Regardless of what type of vehicle you have, there seems to be a tuner for every segment. In today’s example, we’ll look at the performance wing of Holden, HSV. Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) is the official performance vehicle partner of Holden and the vehicles are sold under the HSV badge. The Holden HSV GTS Maloo is their latest creation.
The company took one of their most powerful engines from the HSV Gen-F GTS, and slapped it into the HSV Maloo (Holden Ute). The HSV Maloo is already plenty powerful producing 425 horsepower but the HSV GTS Maloo puts down an impressive and excessive 577 horsepower and 545 lb-ft of torque from its 6.2-liter supercharged V8 engine. It’s quite possible the fastest Ute around.
Besides the much larger engine, the vehicle will also be limited to only 250 units while adding a series of visual enhancement and mechanical improvements. The Holden HSV GTS Maloo will also feature six-piston calipers and 390mm disc brakes and 372mm at the rear. HSV also has their own torque vectoring system in place which works in conjunction with an ESP system designed to decrease under-steer by a significant amount.
The GTS variant of the HSV Maloo is available in either a six-speed automatic or a six-speed manual transmission. Both gearboxes come with separate transmission oil coolers.
On the exterior, the Maloo GTS now features the front bumper used on the sedan version while the rear features dual exhausts. The car also has a lower ride height and sits on 20-inch wheels finished in a dark stainless look. A few GTS badges can also be seen throughout the vehicle both inside and out.
Other mentionable features include HUD (head-up display), land departure warning, forward collision alert, and a performance monitor. The vehicle will go into production November of this year and hit showroom floors shortly after. No word on the price but the HSV Maloo R8 is priced at $68,290 AUD while the HSV Gen-F GTS is priced at $92,990. So expect that price to be in the range of $70k to $90k.
Some wikipedia knowledge:
Did you know, vehicles of this body style originated in Australia and were referred to as Coupe Utility? In 1932, a wife of a farmer in Victoria, Australia wrote a letter to Ford Australia requesting “a vehicle to go to church in on a Sunday and which can carry our pigs to the market on Mondays”. Two years later, the Ford Coupe Utility was born.
[Image: 1934 Ford]
