New Monaro?

Vauxhall’s brawny VXR8 saloon fills the void left by the coupe Monaro pretty well, but there’s a big appetite for a proper two-door Monaro, especially in its native Australia. Now Holden, Vauxhall’s counterpart down under, has just whetted appetites still further with this, the Coupe 60.

Shown as a concept at the Melbourne motor show, the Coupe 60 (Holden is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year) indicates how a new Monaro might look – and the answer is pretty extraordinary. However, this isn’t one of those ‘concepts’ that will appear in a showroom within just a few months. To make a viable business case for the Monaro, Holden would also have to persuade Pontiac to take it as a GTO in the States – which it is unlikely to do as the last Holden-built GTO was a bit of a sales flop. But despite the doom and gloom, Holden seems to have a knack of getting its mad V8-engined concepts into production, and GM boss Bob Lutz is said to be a huge fan of the 60, so we’d be surprised if the new Monaro didn’t appear some time in 2009.

In the meantime the VXR8 is getting a new, 6.2-litre version of the small-block Chevy V8. Power will jump from the current 6-litre’s 411bhp to 430bhp but the price-hike will be minimal. Expect deliveries to start in July.