HDT versus HSV!

Like two kids vying for attention, HDT and HSV went head-to-head with luxo offerings.

Okay, okay, so I’m an old bugger these days. And if you don’t believe me, here’s proof: I drove both these cars and road-tested them for magazines back when they were brand-spankers.

And this aint no rose-coloured look-back with the mists of time, smoothing the rough edges; I remember both cars with ultra clarity because both were, at the time, tarmac sensations.

The LE was first for me, of course, and I very much doubt whether you can possibly imagine the feeling I had as a 20-something kid waltzing down to HDT’s head office, rocking through the front door and asking to see Peter Brock ’cos I was picking up his car.

Yep, Brock’s personal LE was to be mine for a week. How so? Just lucky I guess, but it came down to another journo from another publication having blown up the official HDT test-car (an auto) by going for a top-speed run, with overdrive locked out. Boom! Leg out of bed, apparently.

Brock, being the accommodating bloke he was, stepped out of his own LE for the week, while I tried to do the same to it.

A manual, Brocky’s own car was a light metallic green colour, which was pretty understated and completely failed to attract the highway patrol for the entire time I had it, which included an interstate run at – ahem – substantial average velocities.

Even so, the front and rear spoilers, side mouldings and those 16-inch Momo Stars told anybody half in the know, what you were pedalling.

And lord, did this thing go. While Brock claimed only to have fiddled the engine management (maybe to make the Polarizer appear as if it really was the wonder-gadget, he claimed) there was clearly a bit more boost and he knew what was going on, compared with a stock VL Calais Turbo.

Not only would this thing leave just about anything in its wake, it would also comfortably wind the speedo off the dial. A week was a long time back then.

It’s perhaps a little surprising how much Brock didn’t change to create the LE. Really, the biggest change was to the suspension to incorporate new coils and high-performance dampers (as these were a known budget-victim in the standard Holden product) and fatter sway bars.

The options were interesting, though, with two-tone paint, sports front seats, a sunroof, deeper side mouldings and an alarm system. You could also have your LE without the turbo-motor, if performance wasn’t your thing.

Yeah, right …

A short time later, after the crash-and-burn train-wreck that was the Holden-Brock divorce, I found myself standing in the foyer of the freshly minted HSV in Melbourne’s Notting Hill. This time, I was there to grab an SV88 for a road test.

And that involved meeting with either John Harvey or boss-man John Crennan to collect the keys. This day it was Crenno who met me downstairs and handed me the keys to the SV88.

As I was idling out the car-park, he raced back outside and banged on the side window. I stopped, wound down the glass and he told me: I’ll fax you the press kit in a minute. Yep, this car had the optional fax machine fitted. Welcome to the ’80s.

The rest of the HSV treatment included a tickle-up of the engine to liberate a few more neddies.

When you consider that the Holden-spec carburetted version of the 4.9-litre – once it had been `retuned’ to run successfully on ULP – produced a measly 122kW (the standard Nissan six in the VL was good for 114kW), you can see why a bump to HSV’s 136kW was important.

Some aficionados reckon the power boost came courtesy of HSV fitting a few leftover HDT bits and pieces, but we can’t confirm that. It would seem odd that HSV would want anything to do with Brock’s leftovers after the hugely messy divorce that had just taken place.

The brochure claim of enhanced inlet plumbing and a free-flowing exhaust system seem much more likely, but let’s not rule anything out here. Anybody out there know more about this?

Meantime, the problem with the V8 VL Commodore was, that Holden hadn’t got around to making the five-speed manual live with the carbed V8. So you were stuck with the old-school, three-speed Trimatic gearbox.

But while that did nothing for performance, it did give the car the cruisy, upmarket feel HSV had obviously been looking for.

Inside, it was Calais all the way, baby, with leather and velour for the seats, a Momo steering wheel and all the good bits that spending Calais money entitled you to.

Externally, you’ll spot an SV88 by its slat grille, rear spoiler and two-tone paint that is so subtle, it doesn’t really look like two-tone at all.

To my mind, the Brock LE Turbo was a massively better car than the SV88, purely because it had the stomp the latter should have had. But even with the HSV tweaks, that carbed V8 was a breathless old thing and the three-speed auto did it no favours either.

Compare that to the huffy, swooshy, urgent turbo-six and a manual box, and this 20-something’s mind was all made up.

None of which explains why Melbourne plumber, Mark Bidinost owns one of each. So we asked him: “What’s the fascination with dark blue VL Commos, mate?”

“Um, they just kind of fell into my lap,” he tells us.

“I’m a plumber, so I travel all over the Eastern suburbs (of Melbourne). You get to see all sorts of things in carports and backyards.”

Okay, so tell us about the LE.

“One of my very first cars was a VL and about ten years ago, I just figured I wouldn’t mind a VL Brock. I was with a mate sometime after that and he mentioned this LE. So, next thing, I’ve been for a test drive, made an offer and bought it.”

Mark reckons that while the car was a good starting point, it wasn’t even nearly the spec he was chasing.

“The car was originally built in the two-tone blue it still has, but the original owner ordered it naturally-aspirated. That’s not how I wanted it. I wanted it full-house. It meant I had to find the correct stereo, and then we added the sunroof, had it painted, put in the new interior and then we fitted a turbo motor. I wanted it to be like a car that, if you went to HDT and ticked every box, this is what you would have got. I didn’t build it for anybody but me.”

Mechanically, Mark reckons the only changes have been to fit a slightly more aggressive cam (but still a baby one) and to install a factory-built, four-speed auto transmission because “the engine kept blowing it to bits”.

Cool, but it’s actually the SV88 that is the more intriguing backstory. That starts when Mark was doing a job on-site and discovered the engineless HSV sitting in a shed.

“I stumbled across it on a job and spoke to the owner who said, yeah, I’d sell it, but it’s got no motor or gearbox. Apparently, in 1996 or 97, the engine had spun a bearing , so it was sent to a mechanic across town who pulled out the motor, sent the owner home with the shell and then closed his business down, disappearing without a trace.”

Now, most people would assume that the engine was long gone at that point, but the owner wasn’t having that.

“The dude who owned it wasn’t giving up. He knew the engine had been sent to a machine shop – somewhere – so he kept searching for it. Every time he went near that part of town, he’d visit the local machine shops and ask about his motor. Seven years later, he’s doing just that when he drops in to a shop and there’s his motor sitting on a pallet.”

Unbelievable. And it’s one of those stories you hear at the pub and wonder if it could actually be true. This time it is.

“Once I got the car, I went with the owner to his mum’s place where there were other parts stored and he produces the original books and a full service history.”

Because the car hit the engine snag so early in life and then lost its donk, it remains a low-mileage example. In fact, the odometer reads just 78,000km, and it’s all documented.

It’s still a Trimatic and it still has that miraculous matching-numbers V8. That said, it isn’t q-u-i-t-e the same as when it left HSV.

“The only thing I did was put a stroker kit through the engine. Oh, and a converter in the gearbox. And with that, it really gets up and goes now. But the rest is super original; all the nuts and bolts, everything. I haven’t even vacuumed that car.”

HDT VL LE & HSV SV88 MARKET GUIDE

Peter Brock’s final range of Holden-based cars was the HDT guru’s most diverse and most divisive. All of HDT’s previous products were V8 powered, but once Holden announced that its VL range would include a turbocharged six-cylinder engine, Brock opted to introduce HDT’s first ‘hot-six’, in the shape of the Calais LE.

Even as the LE was being announced, HDT’s days as Holden’s high-performance offshoot were numbered. Once Brock’s Polarizer-fuelled conflict with Holden reached breaking point, UK-based Tom Walkinshaw was co-opted to fill the void. 

His contribution began with the establishing of Holden Special Vehicles, and development of a VL-based Group A SS to rival HDT’s model of the same name. Then, for buyers who shunned the attention generated by Tom’s ‘Plastic Pig’, HSV added its Calais-based SV88.

More than 35 years later, these two cars still offer similar solutions to the same conundrum. How do you cheaply up-rate an Australian car to challenge European prestige sedans at their own, very accomplished game?

Brock’s LE was displayed initially with a 115kW version of the 3.0-litre Nissan-sourced six and in this form, seems to have been largely ignored. Within a few months and once Holden’s version of the Nissan turbo-engine became available, the VL LE quickly established credibility as a performance car. 

HSV with its SV88 went down the well-tried V8 path, but couldn’t match even the published 150kW output of a basic VL turbo, let alone whatever the tweaked version entrusted to a wide-eyed Morley, might have delivered.

Neither car shared the controversy that surrounded their respective Group A cars, although Brock-sanctioned LEs were supplied with an Energy Polarizer.

LE wheels were star-pattern, 16-inch Momo alloys, with a Eurovox stereo and leather-bound Momo steering wheel as standard, and Scheel seats an option. The LE body kit was minimalist, but HDT insisted on replacing the standard Calais latticework grille with a less tacky ‘letterbox’. 

LEs were a source of easy money for cash-strapped HDT. The cars were ordered through one of HDT’s supporting dealers, built by Holden to customer specification then sent to HDT for engine and suspension tweaking, the body kit, seats, wheels and, of course, the Energy Polarizer. 

The SV88 was an equally easy fix, appealing to anyone who’s favourite colour was blue. Above a thin burgundy belt line, the SV88 was Dorward Blue, below it, Jewell Midnight. 16-inch diameter ROH wheels came with body colour centres and the Momo steering wheel was trimmed in pale blue leather.

Knowing that Holden didn’t have long to run with the VL, HSV pushed 150 cars out the door of its newly established workshop in the space of 10 weeks, with the last one completed on July 23, 1988.

The cars were to all intents a Calais V8 with a modified inlet manifold and exhaust generating an extra 14kW, FE2 ‘police’ suspension, a limited-slip diff and 84-litre fuel tank. 

Performance matters less in today’s market than it did back then, with condition and provenance now more important than whichever of the cars might break the beam first, at your local drag strip.

Finding an LE in original non-turbo form is very likely futile, however, a trawl through Unique Cars back issues did find some survivors, from the reported 53 turbo-cars built.

One with drab paint was offered in 2018 at $32,000, followed in 2020 by a well-executed fake at $42,000. Once the pandemic began influencing our market, prices soared and a good LE Turbo was bid early in 2022 to $110,000, but not sold. A year later, one of lesser quality was being marketed at $100,000.

Over on the HSV side, 2021 saw an excellent SV88 sold at a record setting $141,400, but values thereafter dwindled. Early in 2023, a well-kept car made $76,000 at auction, but just a month later one in still decent condition passed in at $50,000.

VITAL STATS

HDT VL LE TURBO

NUMBER BUILT: 53

BODY: Integrated body/chassis four-door sedan 

ENGINE: 2962cc inline six-cylinder w/ overhead camshaft and fuel injection

POWER & TORQUE: 150kW  at 5600rpm, 296Nm at 3200rpm 

PERFORMANCE:0-100km/h: 7.6 seconds, 0-400 metres 15.5 seconds

TRANSMISSION: 5-speed manual or 4-speed automatic 

SUSPENSION: Independent with struts, coil springs and anti-roll bar (f); live axle with trailing arms, Panhard rod and telescopic shock absorbers (r)

BRAKES: Disc (f) disc (r) w/ power assistance 

TYRES: 225/50 VR16 radial

HSV SV88 CALAIS

NUMBER BUILT: 150 

BODY: Integrated body/chassis four-door sedan 

ENGINE: V8 w/ overhead valves and single downdraft carburettor

POWER & TORQUE: 136kW at 4400rpm, 355Nm at 3200rpm 

PERFORMANCE: 0-100km/h: 8.9 seconds, 0-400 metres 16.4 seconds

TRANSMISSION: 3-speed automatic 

SUSPENSION: (As above)

BRAKES: Disc (f) disc (r) with power assistance 

TYRES: 205/55 VR16 radial

BODY & CHASSIS

These cars, due to their significance, should have been treated more carefully than a typical VL. However, behind the body kits is still Commodore sheet metal with no special attention paid to rustproofing and a decent chance of having suffered some crash damage. Rust will be most easily seen in floors (look from underneath as well as above), sills, lower door skins and the panel separating the rear window and boot aperture. VL rust repair sections are being remade and aren’t expensive. Replacement body-kits are available but not cheap, so best to choose a car with all of its add-ons intact. A complete set of tatty HDT LE plastics was advertised in late 2023 at $2000.

ENGINE & TRANSMISSION

Lack of use rather than high kilometres or abuse will be the most likely cause of mechanical problems. Most VLs are rarely driven these days and very few will be driven as their creators intended. Problems with a turbo-six or V8 will likely lie dormant, until the car is driven some distance and properly hot. Ask for service history to see how often engine and transmission oils have been changed. Look for old and perished coolant hoses, oil and especially fuel leaks. Turbo boost should arrive with a noticeable rush, so be wary if it doesn’t. Have someone watch for any kind of exhaust smoke when accelerating and backing off. V8s can also blow smoke due to poorly sealing piston rings. They also suffer oil and fuel leaks. Cars being sold at auction usually won’t be eligible for test drives, but should at least be started and warmed up. Trimatic transmissions are robust and not expensive if they fail. The Nissan auto and BorgWarner T-5 manual are robust as well and able to be replaced by more modern versions.

SUSPENSION & BRAKES

Neither supplier of these VLs had the money to change much beneath the car, yet both versions impressed reviewers with their road holding and ride quality. HDT was a Bilstein advocate but almost 40 years later the original springs and shocks will be well past their prime. Someone hopefully has replaced the shock absorbers, although perhaps with something cheaper and less effective than the originals. The disc brakes should stop either car without undue pressure and in a straight line, but don’t push too hard as they don’t have ABS and you could damage expensive tyres.  Spongy brakes can have a range of causes, but first look at the brake booster. They remain available, reconditioned, at $400-500.

INTERIOR & ELECTRICAL

Trim condition is significant in either the HDT or HSV, The fabrics in both were durable but 30-something years exposure, plus occupants slithering across bolsters will cause wear. Reproduction HDT seat trim is available at less than $1000 per side, although their ability to match an authentic seat is up for debate. Plastic components including the dash, console and switch gear need to be checked for cracking and fading, because good replacements are scarce. Make absolutely sure the Eurovox stereos in either car work properly, because reconditioned they cost over $2000 and a brand new one was seen at $4800.

From Unique Cars #485, Nov 2023

Photography: Shaun Tanner