Drove the new Comm Omega last night

[merlin]

You must be easily impressed...

I found them to be gutless for a 6, thirsty and thrashy. Exterior also looks so poxy in the Omega with the pumped guards, little hub caps, 4WD ride height and slanted appearance. The top models do look and go great but as usual Holden still can't get the base 6's right...

[SpoolMan]

Originally Posted by jaydee

DIDN'T LIKE

The A pillar, very fat.

Everyone says this is a problem, being so big its creates a huge blind spot..
Rods VE Caprice has been plagued with electrical problems it has been jump started 4 times, has had the $75,000 car for just 10 weeks..

[JC]

The VEs look nice in SS form, and in black. Haven't driven one yet, but it (the black SS) does have road presence, so would certainly do me.

Having said that, the best VE I have seen is the one Brad Jones put on it's roof a few weeks ago (Paul Morris' car). LOL

[King Nothing]

Originally Posted by merlin

Exterior also looks so poxy in the Omega with the pumped guards, little hub caps, 4WD ride height and slanted appearance. The top models do look and go great but as usual Holden still can't get the base 6's right...

Totally agree with you there mate. I haven't driven one yet, only seem em on the street and had a sit in one at the sydney motor show. The upper models look good, maybe a little chunky but not exactly ugly. The interior is nice too, definately ahead of the BA/BF but so it should be. But the omega. Ugh. Weirdest looking base model car in years. The stockies look awful and it sits up in the clouds.

[tapeworm]

Remember how good the VT was when it came out in the looks department it was something new and good looking ,the same effect has been lost with the VE I reckon. Real average in the looks department. Does anyone know if the new holdens still have the huge gearing advantages over the Falcons that the older models have in the autos. That is the ratios in Fords auto Falcons etc. was rediculously tall while Holden had better ratios helping take off.

[ED turbo (mickmalta)]

Street cred stems from marketing as most of you know.

Wind back to 1970 and Ford were pumping out ad after ad with phrases "Going Ford is the Going thing..."

As laughable as it is now, it put bums in cars and the Ford product had its share of wins on the mountain, as well as a credible performance car range (XWGTHO's and XYGTHO) There was also a GT Capri and other 'performance' cars that were marketed at the youth market.

I put alot of Ford's marketing issues down to killing off the V8 in 1982.

How can a pushrodded 4.1 litre EFI 6 be 'cool' like a throbbing 351 or 302?

Call it cost cutting, or call it a marketing nightmare, but Ford (I believe) lost its street cred when the V8 was canned.


Sure we have the 5.4, the turbo 6 4 litre and the euro imports, and I'm in no way saying Ford havent got a good product...... But at the end of the day, the car manufacturers always leapfrog eachother with a new "revolutionary" model.

The VE might be judged by Australian Car Magazines as the "best car" at this point in time, but the Magazines have had it wrong in the past (Holden Camira anyone?)

For the VE omega to be standard with no aircon, a spare tyre as an option & rear suspension height that mimics a 4wd, I'd say we were back in 1988, not 2007.

[flukey77]

Originally Posted by philxy351

While they may be a good car, they are defently overated. Not just the VE but the commodore in general. Thats not saying that the falcon is a better car, maybe it is maybe it isn't, but it just never seems to get the kind of attention a commodore does. i'll give you an example, im in yr 12 and at my school there are 0 kids that drive falcons and about 6 that drive commodores, majority being VR/S. Now you might just say that guys that want falcons can't afford them etc, but I know in my group of friends alone im the only guy that likes and has a falcon (but I cant drive it im still 16) , even the guys that have no idea about cars and that arn't even interested in cars are convinced that the falcon is **** and they all want commodores. Now this comes back to my first point that they are overated, how can two cars so similar be called **** by almost everyone and the other be the best thing since sliced bread (and no these guys arnt holden enthusiests or badge loyal).

Either the commodore is overated in the media and in magazines or the falcon is badly underated (probably more the second one). Sorry for going a little off topic, But i thought i needed to post this somewhere.:

As for your post, good on you for posting this here. Although I would never look at buying one (unless the falcon was axed) it is finally good to hear an unbiased opinion of the car. Having travelled in one I liked the handling probably the most, but disliked the lack of guts the engine had and the auto tranny didn't do it for me.:

Amen brother, amen. Deadset, you are on the money ay with your school mates, in my experience there were 3 of us in my group of mates who had any serious mechanical knowledge and 2 of us liked falcons, of the ones who knew sweet squat all about cars most liked commodores. Its the same story now that I am doing university with a completely different group of mates.

As for the XF being mundane, well one of my mates has one, factory stock body lowered to the ground with a worked 4.1 and deadset this thing looks and sounds tough. I'll agree that with the factory 'country pack suspension' they were a bit lame but you would be amazed how good those lowered springs with a nice clean body make it look.

As for the commodore being Australias best selling car, I sometimes think that with the general perception of the Commodore as it is, Holden could have chucked a new body on the VT-VZ frame and it would probably still be Australias best selling car.

[Ozfords]

Having driven the BF Falcon Futura back to back with the VE Commodore Omega on the fast driving circuit at the Goulburn Police Driving Training Course I was amazed at a couple of things...

Everyone’s said it and I'll say it again, the auto gear box and poxy motor don't feel good in the VE, alongside the Falcon the gear changes were sloppy and the motor wasn't as sharp as the 4.0l.

But the electronic aids were awesome, no matter if you drove too fast into a corner or accelerated too early out of the corner, the car sat flat on the road and a slight grinding sound indicated the car was thinking for you.

The Falc had TC but a dash of tyre squeal out of corners when you jumped on the gas kept you honest.

But sitting in the back seat of the VE was something else, it felt like you were sitting in a wedge with the tall side sills at a wacky angle. Plus there was a weird button behind the map reading lights that darkened the whole dash at night except the Speedo it also got rid of the ticking sound when the indicator was used. Whether its a stealth Police thing or standard got me wondering what the hell its there for.


Either way we got a new 380 at work and that is a good template for a auto gearbox. Not bad, not bad at all...


The sloppy gear box and motor all point to one thing, the Omega is unashamedly a low budget VE marketed at the big fleets with no power plant and transmission refinement when compared with the BF XT and Futura.

[BadMac]

Originally Posted by Ozfords

But sitting in the back seat of the VE was something else, it felt like you were sitting in a wedge with the tall side sills at a wacky angle. Plus there was a weird button behind the map reading lights that darkened the whole dash at night except the Speedo it also got rid of the ticking sound when the indicator was used. Whether its a stealth Police thing or standard got me wondering what the hell its there for.

Its standard across the range. Its not a button, above the rotary lights switch are the dash dimming buttons, left for down, right for up. Hold both down together it puts the car into night mode. All lights off, only speedo and center screen in dash stay lit (includes centre console back lights, radio, everything). All chimes etc, off. The speed warning still works. If any real warnings come up, it all imediately lights back up.

Is very good for distance driving as it removes all distracting/tiring light and reflections from within the car, also makes it darker for passengers to sleep.