CERTIFIED FIX

BOTH THE HSV COLORADO SPORTSCAT SV AND THE NISSAN NAVARA N-TREK WARRIOR OWE THEIR BEST TO LOCAL ENGINEERING NOUS…

- FRASER STRONACH

THIS comparison test was well entrained when the somewhat inevitable news broke that General Motors was closing the Holden brand in Australia. Not that we have a Holden – per se – here, but rather a Holden Special Vehicle, or HSV, which is half Holden, the other half being Walkinshaw Performance, tweaker of fast cars.

And while Holden may be closing in Australia, HSV will be staying through a proposed ongoing relationship with General Motors Specialty Vehicles.

This has also put paid to the future of the Colorado based SportsCat, with HSV confirming its demise. GM has also closed its Thai operations, and sold off the plant that manufactures the Holden Colorado. That means the Colorado (and variants) will only be built at GM’s North American and Brazilian plants, which currently only produce left-hand drive models.

Still that may make it just the right time to buy a HSV SportsCat, given its potential collector’s item status as much more than a lifted, stickered and rebooted Colorado, but something that’s worthy of the HSV badge.

There’s an irony here too in that the SportsCat’s adversary, the Nissan Navara N-Trek Warrior, has been created by Premcar, which in an earlier life was Tickford Vehicle Engineering, the company behind Ford Performance Vehicles, the long-time adversary of HSV.

So here is, in part, a showdown of local engineering nous with a Holden verses Ford flavour primarily aimed at making a tougher and more off-road capable ute than the standard offering.