1996 Holden Commodore Equipe Series II review from Australia and New Zealand

Hi All.

I have a VS Equipe V6 and have had lots of fun with this one! These are the main ones.

The buttons have well and truly worn away on the key. Everyone I know has had a worn out key. My Mazda 2 had "hard" plastic buttons not these rubber ones. Why haven't Holden changed this after over a decade of prematurely worn key buttons?

Just a few months after buying my VS through a dealer (hmmmmm...) one of the bearings on the drive belt (the one and only belt in the engine) locked up and flew off whilst I was on the freeway at 90km/h. Thankfully I realized that something was wrong seconds after it happened. I first noticed that I had lost power to my power steering, and the split second that I saw the temperature gauge rapidly climbing up, I pulled right over and popped the bonnet. Long story short, I stopped the engine just shy of over-heating and needed to get a new bearing and belt replaced & retensioned.

I had to replace the rear muffler recently, for $180. I realize that this is fair wear and tear on any vehicle, but I've had to replace exhausts on 3 of the 6 cars I've owned now.

The biggest, most expensive and definitely the most dangerous is the failure of the Booster Unit for the power ABS Brakes. I took it to 2 different places for a quote, and gladly the specialist of the two quoted $332 compared to a much higher $415.

As all Holden Lovers (and more specifically Commodore Lovers) do, I love my car at the end of the day, although I am becoming very concerned about the Auto Transmission now, as I've seen a lot of costly replacements, repairs and rebuilds on this site.