The forgotten Holden Monaro | Drive Flashback

Despite its unquestionable status as an Aussie muscle car icon, not all Holden Monaros were created equal. In April 2001, we took a look at the forgotten Monaro.

Story originally published in Drive on 26 April, 2001

With Holden’s much-anticipated two-door Commodore (hopefully) landing in time for this year’s Sydney motor show, there’s never been keener interest in the hot Holden phenomenon.

But what we really want to know is what the Commodore coupe will be called; simply Holden Coupe or the much more evocative Monaro?

The Monaro name has been around for more than three decades, but it still stirs the soul of Holden fans who like their motoring with a dash of spice. And with the Gen III V8 engine and the swoopy styling, that’s exactly what the new car promises to deliver.

But while it’s easy to picture the original Monaros with their sweeping rooflines and howling V8 engines, there’s a whole generation of Monaros that have been largely forgotten.

Fact is, the Holdens that bore the Monaro tag in the mid and late ’70s were mere shadows of the fire-breathers that went before them, but there are a few examples from most litters that are worth looking at now.

For our money, you can forget just about anything built after the 350 (5.7-litre) Chevrolet-powered HQ Monaro of 1974 (pictured above).

The models that followed – the HJ and HX, pictured below – were toothless old rogues that used wheezy, post-ADR27A engines and traded exclusively on the past. But come late 1977 and the HZ Kingswood-based Monaro is another story.

Okay, so there was no two-door bodyshell to be had (Holden ran out the last of those in HJ, GTS form, pictured above), but the basic four-door body made more sense given the car’s otherwise large exterior dimensions.

By then, Holden had also tacked the GTS nomenclature on to the Monaro, but despite that, it was still offered with the 5.0- and 4.2-litre V8 engines.

The 4.2 didn’t exactly make for a swift means of transport, but there are plenty of folk out there who reckon it’s a sweeter engine than the 5.0-litre. It’s certainly more eager to rev, but in a vehicle purporting to be some kind of muscle car, the 5.0-litre makes a better fist of things.

Holden was obviously using some kind of optimism drive on its measuring equipment in those days, because (depending on whose version of events you subscribe to) the 5.0-litre claimed a whopping 186kW of power.

Given that it took HSV until the 1990s to achieve the same result with electronic fuel-injection, the claim seems at least a trifle over-enthusiastic. Transmission choices amounted to a four-speed manual or three-speed automatic, and suspension was slightly reworked Kingswood fare.

But while that still meant a live rear axle and double wishbone front end, don’t be too put off because the HZ was a major improvement on anything else before it bearing a Holden badge.

With revised mounting points for the suspension members, the HZ, with its Radial Tuned Suspension, was a reasonably tidy handler for such a big, heavy car.

Okay, so it own’t stay with a WRX when it’s being hustled down a mountain pass but it isn’t too bad, especially if you find one with power steering (which became standard from May 1978) because the non-assisted steering is pretty heavy by today’s standards. In the looks department, the HZ Monaro was very much a product of its time, but has held up reasonably well.

For a start, the standard Kingswood body was treated to the more attractive quad-headlight treatment of the upmarket Premier.

The bumpers were painted body colour, a front and rear spoiler added and the grille blacked to form a pretty cohesive visual package.

Throw in the blacked-out window frames, three flutes in the front guards, and the GTS badging and it was King of the Kids in 1977.

You also got a better standard of interior trim including superior carpet, bucket seats, a sports steering wheel and dashboard with circular gauges on a black fascia.

These days, finding a HZ Monaro approaching standard condition will be the trick, although the basic package hardly ever suffered from attempted improvements.

So, what happened next?

Holden did indeed revive the Monaro nameplate for its Commodore-based coupe when it launched in 2001, some 23 years after the last HZ Monaro rolled off the production line in December, 1978.

And the market for classic Monaros has reached stratospheric heights, with early HK GTS models fetching mid-six-figure prices when they go under the hammer. A quick scan of one popular Australian online classified site reveals a price spread of around $220,000 to $450,000 for good examples of the earliest GTS models.

But, it’s not just those early Monaros that have become much sought after, with sellers asking anywhere from $100,000 to $295,000 for HQ GTS two-door models.

And despite their status as the unloved Monaros, four-door HJ and HX GTS are being advertised from $95,000 to $150,000.

Bringing up the rear, much as they do in the Pantheon of Monaro greatness, the four-door only HZ Monaro GTS doesn’t command anywhere the near the premium of earlier generations, with prices in the $60,000 to $80,000 range.

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