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The Lion Roars: Holden VF Ute Sets Nürburgring Record
When reviewers want to say that a vehicle handles well, they often mention how the designers did the testing at the Nürburgring. The “Ring” is considered to be one of the most demanding and difficult race courses in the world, and to get around the track in one piece is a sign of a good car and/or a good driver.
Not many utes have been tested at the Nürburgring. This is partly because these aren’t common vehicles over in Europe (which raises the question about what tradespeople use to haul their gear around – do they all use lorries and vans? And does every single farmer in the European Union use 4×4 motorbikes and tractors to do the rounds?). But back in February this year, when the design team at Holden were just putting the finishing touches on the new Holden VF Commodore, they decided to put the ute through its paces on the (in)famous Nürburgring.
Only two utes had been put through their paces at the Nürburgring before: the Dodge Ram SRT rigged up with the 8.0-litre V10 engine from the Viper, and the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor with a supercharged 6.2-litre V8. It was rather lucky for Holden that a VF Commodore was in Europe already when they had this bright idea: a pre-production model was undergoing a bit of testing in Spain. Time was short: this model would either have to be crushed in Spain or sent back home to Australia within six weeks.
There was no time to book a famous professional racing driver. Instead, the best driver they had on hand was Rob Trubiani, a member of the chassis design team who had been on hand for the testing in Spain, which included calibrating and fine-tuning the ESP. Trubiani was not and is not a racing driver, but he was a certified Nürburgring test driver. After all, what better way to ensure that the chassis you’ve designed works brilliantly than to see how it goes through the Nürburgring?
The team at Holden selected ANZAC Day (Australian time) as the day to put the Holden VF Commodore SS-V Redline Ute against the clock. However, they managed to get it out onto the track in the hands of Rob Trubiani before then, as the track had some of their industry pool days on (days when the track circuit is kept for manufacturers to test cars on). This nearly spelled disaster, as the Holden had a close brush with an Audi that sent the ute off the track onto the dirt at the exit. But what’s a bit of dirt to a ute? Even with this close call, the Holden still managed to do the track in under the 8 mins 40 seconds Trubiani thought it capable of doing.
ANZAC Day dawned in Australia as Trubiani lined the Holden VF Commodore Ute up ready to go. The ride is better seen than merely described, which readers can do at this link, complete with Rob Trubiani providing the commentary on his drive. He gets airborne at one part and dodges debris from a prototype Jaguar that exploded during the industry pool days, but still picks up a time of 8:19:47. And now, the Holden can proudly claim that it’s the fastest time for a ute to complete the Nürburgring. Sure, “utes, pickups and commercial vehicles” is a new category for the Ring, but a record is a record!
To quote Shakespeare, “Well roared, lion!”
The Downside of Driver Convenience Aids
I’m constantly amazed at how smart cars are becoming. To put this another way, every year seems to bring a new set of sensors or cameras to make driving easier and/or safer. Ten years ago, rear parking sensors were the new gadget to improve safety. And there’s no doubt that this has reduced the risk of driveway tragedies where little kids haven’t realised that Mum or Dad are backing the car out and… And it’s probably saved a few bent bumpers or so. Now, of course, rear parking assistance is pretty old hat and nearly every new car has this feature. Now, there are rear cameras, front parking assistance, sensors to the side, sensors that detect a change in your driving style and either cut out the distractions like the phone and the audio if the car “thinks” that things are getting tricky or else flashes and beeps at you to tell you to wake up if it thinks you’re daydreaming or falling asleep (the latter is found in the new Mercedes E-class models, for example).
There’s no doubt that smart cars make driving safer. However, there is a downside to them. We could easily become dependent on them. Possibly, we could depend on them to the extent that we become less alert drivers or less skilled drivers. Why should we get into the habit of looking out behind us when we back if there’s a beeping sensor to warn us of approaching obstacles? Why should we check to the side if the car has a sensor? This will mean that we stop developing our “situational awareness”.
Situational awareness is one of the most important factors when it comes to safety systems in the air. Pilots have gadgets that fly the plane for them (autopilot) but even when the autopilot is taking care of things, pilots still have to have good situational awareness and be constantly alter to what’s going on in the air around them. Yes, flying a plane is trickier than driving a car (even though you can get your private pilot’s licence before you can get your car driver’s licence) and there is a third dimension to deal with. But the air is considerably less crowded than the roads and pilots have radios and radars to talk to other pilots coming towards them, and can get told about congestion up ahead by the control towers. Drivers don’t have friendly ACTs (air traffic controllers) keeping a lookout at areas of potential congestion – a sat-nav package or access to an online webcam that shows congestion is probably the best you can get. Even so, pilots still have to have their situational awareness up to full every time they’re in the cockpit.
And here’s the rub: pilots never learn to fly on planes that have autopilot. Instead, they learn on basic little things where you have to do it all yourself. However, people can learn to drive on cars with all the driver convenience gadgets.
Imagine that you’re a teenager learning to drive in the family car, as most of us do. Earlier, Mum and Dad picked a car that had all the safety features to keep all the kids safe. You’re going to learn how to drive on something that could have front and rear parking sensors and maybe a camera. All well and good. You get your licence, and later, you leave home and you decide to pick up a set of wheels of your very own. The sort of thing you can afford for a first car isn’t going to have all the newest driver aids. We all know what the typical “student car” is like. The most you’re likely to have will be power steering, automatic windows and automatic transmission (like the mid-80s BMW 3-series we sold a couple of years back to a polytech student). If you’re really lucky, it will have cruise control or even steering wheel-mounted audio controls. But you’re going to have to parallel park and back down driveways all the same… but you’ve never learned how to do this without electronic assistance.
So while all the driver convenience aids are very helpful, I have one real concern. Are we going to end up with a generation of drivers who don’t know how to drive without sensors all over the place? Won’t this have us ending up with less skilled drivers on the roads? Will we get drivers who are so used to getting information about their surroundings from the display screen in the dashboard that they don’t look out the window or use the mirrors? Because those awareness aids only work when the ignition is on – when you’ve turned the engine off and are about to get out of the car, the car won’t tell you about the approaching cyclist you’re about to knock to Kingdom Come with the door.
My teenage son is months away from being old enough to get his learner’s licence. I’m going to insist that he does at least some of his learning in the old warhorse of a Nissan that my husband uses for his contractor work, which has power steering and that’s about it, so he knows how to drive something basic and bog-standard – a dumb car rather than smart car, so he ends up a smart driver rather than a dumb one. I hope other parents will do the same.
Map Reading, Seat Position And Other Driving Debates
They say that one of the things that causes the most car-related debate between couples is navigation and map reading. This may have been changed by GPS systems and sat-nav. Possibly, this is one reason why navigation systems tend to come as standard features on an awful lot of new cars coming out these days – it saves marital conflict over map reading.
However, this isn’t the case in our household. And this is not because our Ford has a red-hot navigation system. It doesn’t (and I’m pretty good at reading maps). What it doesn’t have is memory seats, and the different settings (forward & back, lumbar support and seat angle) are manually adjustable. So the thing that causes the debate is seat position.
The arguments caused by a lack of memory seats are less heated than the ones that stereotypically crop up about map reading. They are more in the nature of low-grade grumblings.
The typical argument about map reading goes something like this.
“You’re going the wrong way, dear,” she says
“No I’m not,” he says.
“You were supposed to turn right at that intersection that you drove past a minute ago.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so?” He keeps driving in the same direction.
“I did say so! I told you to turn right at Queen Street ages ago.”
“I didn’t know that was Queen Street? How was I supposed to know that was Queen Street? Do you really expect me to read every single little road sign?”
“Yes, I do. I would have been able to read it if you hadn’t been driving so fast.”
“I am not driving fast. Why didn’t you tell me that Queen Street was coming up? You’ve got the map.”
“I’m sure I said to take the next right. There haven’t been any other roads to the right and I thought you had enough common sense to read the road signs.”
“I’m relying on you to tell you which way to turn and when to turn. Why can’t you do a simple thing like that?”
“I did! And you’re still going the wrong way! Why won’t you listen? I had the map here and told you.” She holds up the map and points to the intersection in question.
“You’re holding the bloody map upside down again! I don’t know why you do that – it drives me nuts and how you can read the thing properly like that, I don’t know.”
And so on and so on, ad nauseam.
Seat position grumbles are less dramatic and usually only take place once in the journey unless one of us is in a very bad mood.
His grumble: “Who’s been fiddling around with the seat position? What have you done with it this time?”
“I moved the seat forward. You know I’ve got short legs and can’t reach the pedals if I don’t.”
“I can’t get behind the wheel properly. Is that all you changed?”
“I put the seat back up, of course. It’s better for your back if you sit upright.”
“Well, it can’t be good for you, squished up behind the steering column like that. What if there’s an accident?”
“Um, isn’t that why they invented airbags?”
“Hmm.” He adjusts the seat tilt. “Are you sure that that’s all you changed? I’m sure it feels different from the way I left it.”
“I didn’t touch the lumbar support. I never touch the lumbar support.”
“Well, it feels funny, anyway.” More fiddling and fine-tuning. “Can you put your seat back? I can’t see out the side with your head in the way.”
The response from me is muttering along the lines of “Well, if you didn’t have your seat back so far, I wouldn’t be in your line of sight.” The journey then gets underway and the grumbling stops.
My grumble when I get into the driver’s seat is the reverse. “You must have arms like a ruddy gorilla. How do you manage to reach the steering wheel properly from way back there?”
“I like to sit back and relax when I drive. You look so uptight and tense with your nose just about over the steering wheel like Mr Magoo.”
“It’s a wonder you don’t fall asleep with the seat as far back as you have it. And then you’ve got the cheek to grumble at the kids for kneeing you in the back. You’ve just about got your head rest up their noses. I’m sure it’s bad for your back, sprawling like that.”
There are other great driving debates as well, though not all of them happen in my family. Classics include:
- Will you stop going around the corners so fast – you’ve got a steering wheel to hold onto.
- Keep your eyes on the road rather than fooling around with the balance of the audio system.
- Will you kids stop fooling with the electric windows?
- Stop kicking the back of my seat.
- Get your knees out of the back of my seat.
- Get that dog off the leather seats or he’ll ruin them.
- Turn that music down – it’s so loud you can’t hold a conversation.
- Are we there yet?
Any I’ve missed?
Information Overload!
Does this sound familiar? I’m doing the Mum’s Taxi thing, picking kids off and running them down to after-school activities like the typical parent these days. It might not be a long drive, but the amount of signage that I go past is fairly large.
You’ve got the school speed limit sign complete with the times that these apply. You’ve got a roundabout or two to go through with all the signs associated with those (at least they’re not multi-lane roundabouts). There are a handful of Give Way signs on the way, a couple of Children Crossing signs, a No Parking sign outside the school and some Bus Stop signs on the way to the activities. I’m lucky that the route I use doesn’t involve traffic lights with all the umpteen different signs that are involved there depending on the lane that you want to go to. Signs everywhere – flashing, in some cases.
But those aren’t the only signs I see. Thanks to an acute outbreak of road works by my local council, I’m coming across the “road works” signs (once known as Men At Work signs), plus road cones and people in high-viz vests putting up bright coloured barriers to stop people driving/walking/biking into the hole they’re trying to dig.
On top of all this, you’ve got all the advertising material and the signage to tell you that you have actually reached the gym or wherever you need to go. Signs, signs, signs. And in a few places, you’ve got the signs for cyclists and pedestrians into the bargain.
It doesn’t get much better once you get into the countryside. Not only do you get the boards telling you that you’ve got XXX km to go until you get to the city where Grandma lives and signs telling you to watch out for horses/wombats/strong crosswinds/railway crossings, you also get the signs telling you about the intersections you can expect ahead of you. These include my candidate for most pointless sign: the one about falling rocks. OK, it’s kind of handy to know that there might be a rock on the road ahead of me, but you can get debris on the road anywhere, so I’m usually scanning the road for hazards. But if a rock falls when I’m driving through the area, I never know what I can really do about that. Second on my list of “statements of the blinking obvious” is the one about a railway crossing ahead complete with “prepare to stop” emblazoned on it. Really, I’m going to drive out into the middle of the intersection in front of an oncoming train without that sign, aren’t I?
Signs might be all very well and good, and they do serve a useful purpose. However, if we are continually confronted by signs left, right and centre (and let’s not even start on the information provided by in-car information systems at the same time), we become blasé about them and start tuning them out. It certainly doesn’t help when businesses decide to make their signs look rather like road signs. Sometimes, the powers that be up the ante by adding brighter colours and flashing lights. But then everyone starts doing it. And then we tune out the new level of attention-grabbing signage and the cycle continues.
I can just remember when the local fire engine had just one or maybe two red lights and a siren. Now, every emergency vehicle seems to flash like a Christmas tree on steroids and sounds like it’s doubled the decibel level of the sirens just to cut through all the other flashing lights and sounds around us. Yes, it’s important to see emergency vehicles, but is it really necessary to go to these levels? Just think how quickly people respond when they see those little red and blue lights mounted discreetly on a Holden Commodore letting them know that they’ve just lead-footed it past an unmarked police car…
I sometimes wonder if the information overload actually contributes to road safety rather than addressing it. I’m not alone in thinking this. There are Austroads research publications about this and there have been those campaigns about the dangers of distracted driving. However, the billboards reminding us not to drive distracted are themselves distractions…
Level 2, 9 Help Street