1998 Holden Commodore VT review from Australia and New Zealand

Indicator stalk clicks constantly unless it is placed into a specific "at rest" position, which it does not fall into naturally.

Transmission hunts between fifth and fourth gear when travelling at 100km/h freeway speeds.

I own a 1998 VT Commodore Executive sedan, with a few factory fittings, cruise control, ABS, and such.

I don't have many problems with it, the transmission changes smoothly, although I do have a minor quirk where sometimes when going 100km/h (freeway speed), it will decide to cruise in top gear, leaving my revs at 2000rpm (where I want them) and sometimes it will down-shift and run the revs at 2800rpm (higher fuel usage), but that doesn't happen often and I can usually fix it by accelerating manually to 80km/h, then engaging the cruise and accelerating to 100km/h using the cruise.

The indicator stalk also makes clicking noises constantly, unless I move it to a specific spot that I have found works quite well to minimize the noise. Annoying, but hardly something that's going to make me criticise the car as a whole. I'll probably get a quote to get it fixed, and then weigh up the pros and cons of having that money or fixing the problem.

The boot lid water leakage does annoy me, but I very rarely carry any loads in the boot (being a P plater, I don't carry kids in the car), and whenever I do have something to go in the boot, I usually just put it in the back seat, because a) I don't usually have anyone in the back seats and b) I have a 12inch sub in the back which I don't want to be colliding with luggage. So the amount of time I'm opening the boot is minimal.

The range at which the keyless entry works also seems to vary massively. Sometimes it will work from up to 15-20m away, sometimes I have to be almost right next to the car for it to work. Minor quibble... you can't get in the car from 15-20m away.

Fuel economy is nice, I'm not a typical cash-strapped teen, so I can afford to run the car a bit heavily on fuel usage, I usually get about 500km to a tank, which is plenty for me. I would prefer the electronic readout to just tell me exactly how many liters of fuel I have in the tank, rather than making an (inaccurate) estimate of how far I could go.. but that's a comment directed at ALL cars with fuel estimation and not just the VT.

Performance is about what you would expect from a 3.8L V6, at a claimed 147kw...my car feels a little more powerful than that, I believe the previous owner installed new extractors which may have increased performance.

Looks are unquestionably sexy, the car is long and wide with an aggressive stance, and although the camber on the wheels does impact tyre longevity, it widens said aggressive stance making it much more appealing. The spoiler also looks nice. The stock wheels I've seen on other VTs are not particularly good, although not particularly bad. Not something that affects me, the previous owner installed 18" mags.

I bought the car with 155,000kms for $5500AU, and have since done another 3,000 kms with no problems, and the full service history indicates the only serious problem they ran into was replacing the ignition system at 110,000 and replacing the alternator at 130,000.

Overall I love my VT, its much nicer than my previous ride, a 1993 Hyundai S Coupe, which was slow, unattractive (to me), uncomfortable in the interior, unrewarding to drive, and had mechanical problems out to Tuesday, despite having done 50,000 LESS kilometres than my Commodore. Pretty much the only advantage the Hyundai had was getting 500kms to a tank of fuel the same way the VT does, except doing it with a 25L tank instead of a 75L tank. However maintenance costs more than swallowed the saving from that.