Part 1: The Decision

Part 2: Initial Impressions

Part 3: Driving Overview

Part 4: SS-V Performance vs XR6T (see below)

SS-V Performance vs XR6 Turbo

So power down…I’m sure you want to know!

Firstly, it is well worth noting that the XR6T was always run on premium 98 octane fuel. The SS-V has only been run on standard unleaded with 91 octane rating. The SS-V would run even better on 98 octane, and anecdotal evidence suggests there to be at least a 10kW reduction from using the lower octane fuel.

Launch Control and Clutch

The SS-V is significantly easier to launch hard than the T. The downside is that often when doing it you will burn the hell out of your clutch unless you do a clutch dump. I have burnt the clutch in this car much worse than any other car I have owned, including leaving car-sized plumes of clutch smoke behind the car. And that did not involve dumping the clutch or meaning to burn the clutch…just an attempt to leave the lights at a slightly faster than normal pace. It’s just the nature of the ultra light, late-gripping, sticky, zero feel clutch in the SS-V. As a result I would be surprised if the clutch lasted a year….whereas driving just as hard in the T I never went through a clutch in 2 XR6T’s over a total of 4 years.

God help anyone towing heavy trailers in a manual SS-V.

The XR6T’s clutch was much better weighted and has more feeling and starts to grip in a better place – and is more forgiving. But at least the launches in the SS-V are hard! The car puts the power down more cleanly than the T which sometimes suffers an abundance of torque coming on too quickly and abruptly. (Common characteristic of a turbo). The 19″ tyres no doubt help over my XR6T’s 18′s. So as a result its often easier to do hard launches in the SS-V than the T….but thats not to say a well launched T wont kick a pretty well launched SS-V.

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Part 1: The Decision

Part 2: Initial Impressions

Part 3: Driving Overview – See Below.

Part 4: SS-V Performance vs XR6 Turbo

Driving Overview

To more accurately describe the SS-V I have reviewed how it performs in two distinct scenarios: typical inner city driving, and windy, hilly bendy driving, as found in many country areas.

City Driving

People think Nurburgring is a complex track: Melbourne Race Circuit beats it hands down.

Around the city the SS-V is deceptively fast, and it’s even easier to speed given the speedo is busy and hard to read at a glance. As a result, turning on the digital speedo is a license-saver. It’s common to fang it up to 60 and look down and realise you are doing 80+.

The car has enough power for spirited city driving, and is very quick to respond to the throttle at any revs meaning those small gaps you may go for are all the easier to do with a larger margin left over just in case. No worries about a half second of turbo lag here.

For those interested in more detailed engine and performance descriptions, lots is on the way in the next part of the review including detailed thoughts on an engine performance comparison with my XR6T.

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Part 1: The Decision

Part 2: First Impressions – See below.

Part 3: Driving Overview

Part 4: SS-V Performance vs XR6 Turbo

First Impressions

Picking my SS-V up from the dealer was a little more pleasant than the Ford pickups I have done as I had a particularly nice guy I dealt with….but the Holden dealership has big boots to fill if its servicing standards are to be equal or better than those I have experienced from Ford over the last 4 years.

So, my lesson in how the car works was over. It’s just me sitting in the driver’s seat in the car in the driveway of the dealership. Alone. Just me and nearly 6000cc’s of anti-tree-hugging no….tree destroying….V8.

Holden’s answer to the Toyota Prius: The 6 litre V8.

Lets take a moment and briefly compare the power and performance with a competitor to the SS-V: The Toyota Prius.

The Prius is powered by not one, but four powercells, as pictured below:

Despite four power cells compared to just one power unit in the SS-V, here is a brief summary of the benefits the SS-V offers over a Prius:

- 4.7 times the power
- 4.6 times the torque,
- 5.5 times the fuel consumption
- 4 times the cubic capacity
- 0-100 in less than half the time
- The driver maintains his masculinity

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Part 1: The Decision – See below.

Part 2: Initial Impressions

Part 3: Driving Overview

Part 4: SS-V Performance vs XR6 Turbo

The Decision

We all know about the typical Aussie Holden V8′s: loud, primitive, rough, low revving and wheezy at higher revs, chassis not capable of handling the power; a real handful on the edge.

That was then. This is now. With the introduction of the VE series SS and SS-V, Holden have raised their own bar, finally. A chassis with the modern day design features found in the competing Ford BA XR6T and XR8 series for the last few years….and a few new improvements over the BA to boot.

This is a story of a hard core Ford XR6T owner – two T’s in four years – and his quest to find an alternative to getting a 3^rd XR6T….something not attractive due to the lack of changes – particularly no decent power increase – since the first T I purchased back in 2002.

My second XR6 Turbo.

240kW, 450Nm@2000rpm. (322hp/332lb-ft).

Let’s look at my situation to put things in perspective: my cars have to be standard, and selected form the normal Ford or Holden range. No HSV’s or FPV’s. If the car I get is standard I get endless fuel and tyres factored in to my deal regardless of how much I use (costs me the same). Modify the car and I lose that and have to pay for what I use. For a guy who gets over 20L/100km of premium in the city, and for whom rear tyres last less than 10,000km, that’s a big incentive to stay with standard cars. So standard cars it is.

So that narrows the choice – the next car is to be a standard Ford or Holden.

First thought: Ford XR8

Option one – before the introduction of the VE Commodore – was the XR8. Not for any other reason than I knew the chassis was good (being the same as my T) and it would give me a different experience other than the XR6T’s which I was used to.

The XR8 may look similar to the XR6 Turbo but they are two very different cars to drive.

260kW, 500Nm@4000rpm.(348hp/369lb-ft) but you wouldnt know it from driving one.

A test-drive quickly killed that idea – while the XR8 sounded fantastic, it appeared to make a lot of noise and not really go anywhere -at least not quickly. The lack of low down torque was very un-V8 like. It left you with a usable but very narrow power-band – not what a large capacity V8 is supposed to be about.

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Well, well, well.

As any Windows user will know, Apple fans gloat in their supposedly perfectly secure and virus-proof operating system (well, lets ignore iPods and their global dissemination of viruses-in-a-box for now [perhaps toe the Apple line and be lame enough to blame Microsoft for a faulty product Apple shipped]).

Ironically, a recent Slashdot report has this little nugget about the history of viruses:

“In July of 1982, an infected Apple II propogated the first computer virus onto a 5-1/4″ floppy. The virus, which did little more than annoy the user, Elk Cloner, was authored in Pittsburgh by a 15-year-old high school student, Rich Skrenta. The virus replicated by monitoring floppy disk activity and writing itself to the floppy when it was accessed. Skrenta describes the virus as “It was a practical joke combined with a hack. A wonderful hack.” Remember, he was a 9th grader when he did this.”

’nuff said.

I just don’t get it.

For years now, audio/video products have been getting better and better (valve-lovers [including me] may disagree on some level, but that’s a discussion for another day!).

Huge R&D budgets have been spent on getting higher quality sound and better pictures in front of consumers with large jumps in technology to the point that old proven formats are becoming out of date now.

So what has gone wrong in the last few years?

In many ways things have improved: CDs and DVDs have bought digital quality to the home. Blu-ray and HD-DVD are improving on that even more.

But we also seem to often be going backwards and sacrificing something important: quality. At what cost does convenience come?

Some examples:

1) iPods. Dont get me wrong, iPods serve a purpose as an effective replacement for the old Sony Walkman and are great on the move. They hold a zillion songs which is a lot better than a tape or CD. They have a good display and interface. But the sound quality sucks. Its fine for when you are on the move, but who in their right mind would use an iPod for serious sound?

Well it appears some people are, as you can see with $400 cables to connect your iPod to your stereo. Its just mad. Now I am a bit of an audiophile so fully understand that good cables can make a big difference (I admit to having a fair assortment of good cables I then treated with liquid nitrogen…), but the simple saying “garbage in, garbage out” applies with your iPod feeding a good stereo. It doesn’t matter how good your amp is, the music will not sound nearly as good as music from a half decent source, even if that music is in the same AAC or MP3 format. Some may say its a matter of reducing signal loss, but when you start with crap, trust me, a percentage point or two extra signal loss is not relevant. And certainly not worth buying $400 cables. Even if you have a lot of cash.

So what is their logic? Is the convenience of having a small music source (ironically, most likely connected to a large 45 pound amp and two 20 pound speakers!) worth the sacrifice of sound quality on your good stereo and with your good cables? Nope. Its just dumb, and I cant imagine anyone who would buy those cables would actually be an audiophile as their good stereo would not be running off an iPod in the first place. Period.

2) LCD TV’s: I was at a local store checking out some blu-ray and an AppleTV, which happened to be connected to a top of the line 52″ LCD TV. Cool, a TV that is thin…better profile than a CRT. But the picture quality? Absolute rubbish. Even a not very visually astute friend of mine commented on it. Large screen. Thin TV. Poor quality. The colors – muddy. It looked like a 128 colour palette and a face looked appalling with none of the subtleties of colour and detail that denote a good picture. Motion isn’t very good either. Just doesn’t look right. And lines were jagged, looking like it needed a healthy dose of 16x anti-aliasing like used in video games to improve straight lines from the dreaded jaggies.

And it cost a fortune – $6100.

Who on earth would buy it? Not only does it sacrifice quality for large picture size and a thin profile, but the most amazing thing is that there is another viable alternative that has all the benefits and a much lower cost, and a much better picture quality if you buy the right one: plasma TVs! There is just no excuse for people buying rubbish when probably about 3m away is the same concept with great picture for 1/3 of the price. Plasma unlike LCD has come of age (finally!). I am sure LCDs will eventually too, but for now, no way. The only place I would buy one for was if I needed a small TV on a cramped office desk.

So where does it end? At this rate in another 5 years we will all have 80″ monochrome monitors with a 1Hz refresh rate and the sound will be from a seriously cool little device, but with the quality of a wax recording.

Bring back quality I say. Enough sacrificing quality for convenience or simply to allow a company to compete in a market segment that simply offers stupid people more stupid choices.

Oh you just have to love the balls this driver has – the cops must LOVE pulling him over.
Spotted in Melbourne Australia, a black Mercedes with the following number plate:

We all know of Scientology: actors like Tom Cruise have put it firmly on the map with comments about actress Brooke Shields taking anti-depressants.

Police investigating a triple stabbing in Sydney last week, which resulted in two deaths, found that the family of the accused allegedly denied her follow-up psychiatric assistance because they were Scientologists. The accused was diagnosed as suffering a psychotic illness in 2006 and follow-up treatment was declined by the family because of their belief in Scientology.

The accused is alleged to have stabbed her 15 year old sister and 53 year old father to death, and seriously injured her 52 year old mother. After the mother ran for help to a neighbour, the neighbour stated she saw the 24 year old woman staring blankly over the fence into her yard, covered in blood, the knife still in her hand.

The girl is believed to have ceased psychiatric treatment and also prescription anti-psychotic drugs in 2006. Her parents are believed to have wanted their daughter to cease taking the psychiatric drugs, and started her on non-psychiatric compounds imported from the USA.

It should be noted that three weeks prior to the incident, the girls condition worsened, and her parents allowed her to re-start her anti-psychotic medication as it assisted her in sleeping.