The GTSR W1 Is An Impressive Road-Legal Race-Car From HSV

2022-06-18 22:48:22 By : Mr. John Ren

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The super sedan now cost four times its original price.

Is this your first time encountering the word "super sedan?" We won’t guilt-trip you for it unless you’re Australian. Any Aussie gearhead should be familiar with the nation’s annual Super Sedan Championship, a dirt racing series sanctioned and regulated by the Australian Saloon Car Federation (ASCF). In that sense, a sedan isn’t a super sedan if it isn’t built with either aluminum or fiberglass chassis, and that's because it has to be purpose-built for dirt racing.

Then again, super sedans have evolved over the years from just dirt racing machines to comfortable high-performance automobiles. Now, a sedan like the HSV GTSR W1 leaves us with a dilemma, such that we don’t know what’s an apt name for it; a sports car or an all-out supercar? This car gave us a rethink about what a true-to-form supercar really is. It’s said you can tell a lot about a man from his shoes, and you dare call this a sedan when it’s shod with tires you can only find on supercars.

Wait, some high-end cars do provide those shoes as an option. But the HSV GTSR W1 wears them as standard and with pride, but more on that later. Commanding a price more than thrice the original MSRP five years after it was introduced in 2017, this car is set to become a sought-after collector car. The HSV GTSR W1 is already the most expensive and fastest Australian car ever built. Let's check it out.

Related: These Are The 10 Best Super-Sedan Concepts Of All Time

It is very fast. 62 mph in 4.2 seconds is behind the likes of Pagani Zonda or Praga R1R, but an impressive speed for a sedan. Besides, the two nameplates we just dropped are hypercars that hug the ground like squirrels. Get rid of the electronic speed limiter, and the W1 would churn out a top speed of around 182 mph.

As a refresher for those coming late to class, HSV is short for Holden Special Vehicles, the Holden performance car division operating out of Victoria since 1987. The GTS R is short for Going-to-the-Sun Road, Holden’s version of Gran Turismo, we’re sure.

It's no secret the Australian automobile manufacturing scene is in bad shape recently, and this ultimate sedan called the W1 might very well be the last of its clan, a "most sophisticated and powerful conclusion" of the GTSR nameplate. We're talking "sophisticated" in the true sense of that worldly word; carbon fiber fender vents, carbon fiber airbox, Aeroflow Performance rear spoiler with carbon fiber upper, and distinctive W1 badges, all of which are early pointers to the HSV GTSR W1's caliber.

The jury is still out about who said it first, but we heard the 14th Nigerian Head of State say he never looks down on anyone except to admire their shoes. We’re certainly admiring the W1's shoes featuring some real big stoppers you're unlikely to find in your average super sedan.

We’re talking 410 mm AAP Racing-branded brakes with 6-piston monobloc calipers and cross-drilled holes in the pad area, about 25 percent bigger and 10 percent lighter than the standard GTS and about 100 mm bigger than SS Commodore. Behind the brakes is a fixed rate upside-down SuperShock strut unit with a coil-over at the rear, same SuperShock brand that supplies suspension to the Vulcan Shore racing team.

We've mentioned carbon fiber a lot in this article, and that's not exaggerated.

We're talking carbon fiber front fascia and a front ¾ section made of polypropylene instead of steel, allowing it to set 12 millimeters wider on each side to accommodate those massive wheels.

Imagine $800 apiece Pirelli Pzero Trofeo R track tires you'd only see in supercars but is standard on the W1, the only car in the world that offers that; a semi-slick tire specifically designed for racing and maximum grip. They're 265 milliliters wide at the front and a whopping 295 wider in the rear. The shoes do define the man.

Beneath the hood lay the same powerplant fitted in the Corvette C6 ZR1, a 6.2L supercharged LS9 Generation IV alloy V8 motor paired with a Tremec TR-6060 (MH3 spec.) 6-speed manual transmission specifically crafted to optimize track performance and improve drivability. That's a big supercharger making 636 horses and 627 pound-force feet of torque.

The supercharger is rated at 2.3L per rev. When considered at crank ratio, you get an additional 522 liters of the airing of the motor at 6000 rpm. Holden considers this powerplant a “pinnacle of 30 years of HSV engineering.” It includes a custom carbon fiber airbox that withstands both temperature and pressure.

True to Holden's words, every inch of the engine bay is hand-built.

The interior is extensively made of high-quality Alcantara material, from the seats to the steering wheel. Despite the supercar-rated powertrain, driving the HSV GTSR feels as simple as driving any other Holden Commodore.

Related: 10 Of The Fastest Sedans In The World (And 10 That Eat Their Dust)

When this car was unveiled in 2017, we expected at least 300 units to come out of the HSV Clayton, Australia plant, but production maxed out at 298, excluding the 4-unit Maloo W1 variant the company built for inner-circle HSV executives and the marque’s most loyal customers.

The Maloo W1 was the crown of the Holden Ute performance utility vehicles the company had been building since 1990, distinguished by its high-performance V8 engine and full body kits. “Maloo," meaning "storm" or "thunder" in the Aboriginal language, is fitting for a variant pegged at around $100,000 when it was first released, only to end up fetching $1.5 million on an online Lloyds auction barely five years later.

A 2017 Holden Commodore VFII SS-V Redline sedan fetched $750,000 at the same auction, more than half a million dollars and almost eleven times more than the car’s original $65,000 MSRP. It isn’t just the threat of extinction that’s driving up the value of these cars. The people at HSV put their heart and soul into making these last breeds before closing shop.

The GTSR W1, for example, is a sedan so mature it should be trading war stories with supercars like Bentley Continental GT, which justifies a $91,000usd starting price for a so-called sedan. The Maloo may be the rarest Commodore because there are only four of them, but the GTSR W1 would've fetched double the value with a matching production number. With 275 units sold in Australia, an owner put the car up for auction with a $323,840usd starting bid. Gearheads certainly respect a car’s value.

Philip Uwaoma, this bearded black male from Nigeria, has single-handedly written more than a million words in the form of articles published on various websites, including toylist.com, rehabaid.com, and autoquarterly.com. Of all the websites and platforms Philip’s work appears on, the absence of his name attached to the articles published on Auto Quarterly is the only one that makes him moan; “ghostwriting sucks.” Albeit, Philip still won’t shy away from writing as a ghost. After all, it's the value he adds to human life with his pen that fuels his passion for writing. He has no dog, no wife- yet- and he loves Rolls Royce more than he really should.