I have an '08 Calais 6.0 and there's 2 things that annoy me about this video; Vicky would probably drive my car faster than me and I'll never have her as my wife.
I was fortunate to be involved in this project whilst at Lotus cars Was involved spoilers and trim colour Empire Green Went for a few trips round test track and suppliers a quick and classy car.
Liked the fact that you can still see the family line resemblence nearly 20 years later. Both cracking cars and show what GM are capable of when they put their minds to it.
Basically basically gave a shell and an engine block to lotus who then created the legendary lotus carlton which laid the bench mark which holden any seem to have just about bettered so far so I'd say gm learnt alot from the collaboration but lotus built still built the best for 2 decades!
today i drove my godfathers lotus carlton. only 16k miles on the clock, and the rare lotus tune package (remap). its aroung 500bhp and the acceleration pushes your eyes to the back of your skull!! i had to cling onto the steering wheel!!! fantastic car.
The vxr8 is miles ahead technology wise and a totally diffrent car what does anyone expect however the lotus carlton really held its own against the vxr8 and considering its years old it looks well looked after and really kept up with the vxr8 very well done to the lotus carlton 💚❤👍
@@mintoxace5571 The Vauxhall/Opel Omega on which the Lotus Carlton is based is only loosely related to the VN. I own a VN wagon, and have a model of the Opel Omega wagon the VN borrows some pf its parts from. They did what Ford Australia did with the XD; take some parts and a few styling cues from its European cousin the Granada, graft the "new" body onto an existing XC floor pan and use their engines and transmissions. Holden used the VL floor pan, used the Omega's side doors, some trim, and changed just about everything else. The arse end of the Omega was as square as an XD wagon
Theyre all GM (opel /Vauxhall/ Opel) and all commodores were based on the opel (opel/vauxhall/holden) until the VZ ....to to be honest it looks more like my old dark green ED falcon w/bodykit
@@Skippy-id9yt That was only the starting point, and the list of changes Holden made was very long. When Holden was first developing the VB, they knew they had to change things from the start. The Opel Rekord and Senator they were based on originally didn't have rack and pinion steering, which was a fail as far as dropping a 308 in it goes. They used the Senator nose on a Rekord shell to fit the inline 6 cylinder engines. This original prototype was taken around Lang Lang the way the previous Kingswoods and Toranas were; the usual bumps, dirt, speed dome and so on. After 1500 km, the grille fell out. After about 5000 km, they had to scrap it. Here was where the real work began, as Holden reworked just about everything, including the interior fabrics. While the outer skin is similar, there is so much beneath the skin that changed
Fair play the amazing, very rare, and ultra special Lotus Carlton maybe a little bit slower than the newer car, but remember the Carlton is old technology but it’s still up there in the top ten fantastic car list. Lotus Carlton for me all the way
Exactly...should have hammered the carlton,but 40hp more and 15years evolution for 1.5 seconds says more about how bad the vxr was.400Hp cars of vxr's day hammered it.
@@harshgentle1529 - well, that's probably true, but remember they made less than a thousand of them and it was a UK-only car. Those who read the car-mags of the time knew about it (like, me over here in Australia) but with our restrictive import laws had bugger-all chance of actually seeing one. Regardless, it's probably the halo car for Vauxhall, alongside the Prince Henry of 1911 (a long time between drinks there ...)
@@thosdot6497 It was not a UK only car. To the rest of the world it was Opel Lotus Omega and it was sold in several countries. Total production 950 cars including the UK "Vauxhall" version.
A naturally aspirated engine,in a car carrying 200kgs of extras, beat a car that needs two turbos to produce less torque and hp, and in a car that has worse handling and less in it for the driver... Depends how you look at it
@@GregoryShtevensh well even Stevie wonder in a dark room with a box on his head wouldn't look at it like that .. 6.0 vs 3.6 .. Over two decades between them and that's the best it can do .. The Carlton will go down as a pure classic ..the other to the junk yard .
@@adamhamilton5294 all an engine is is an air pump... so essentially anybody who actually knows what an engine is would see it like that... the amount of cylinders that it uses to pump air is really irrelevant when you've got an extra pump called a turbocharger attached to one of the engines that you compareing to, because essentially a turbo or supercharger just does the same thing as another engine, and that's pump air
@@adamhamilton5294 and you're also failing to take into account the amount of effort each cylinder needs to put in to output the same amount of power. Obviously when you have more cylinders, each cylinder can share the load, so it's easier on the engine. Less cylinders means less reciprocating mass. It's easier to get going, you'll have more initial torque per displacement, and if you turbo it or supercharged it, you can pump the same amount of air through as you would with more cylinders. But all you're doing, is putting each cylinder through more strain to achieve the same thing that you could achieve with more cylinders. You seem to have this implanted idea that less cylinders with equal power should be celebrated but it's due to how you view engines and the work they do. The extra displacement is one of the advantages given to having extra cylinders. But on the other hand the extra air forced into a cylinder given by a turbo or supercharger is the advantage given there. It's just the same thing - finding ways to pump more air... neither is more impressive than the other in my mind
GM still owned Lotus when they launched the new Omega in 1994, so why on earth didn't they make a new Lotus Omega based on the second generation Omega? It would have been fantastic.
Considering the disparity of horsepower, and obviously dated suspension, full marks to the Lotus Carlton for keeping up. Being 1.5 seconds slower than a VXR8 is not something to be laughed at
@@matthewheffernan3877 Would be a very interesting comparison between even a Cosworth Sierra and a later model Falcon XR6. Both would be fast, no doubt about that. The Sierra might lose a little in braking and suspension. The Falcon's infamous Barra turbo is capable of 1200 horsepower with minimal modifications
@@kristianspencer1978 Yeah right. What did Vauxhall contribute to this car? Fuck all, apart from a badge change. The car was designed, manufactured and test in Australia as a Holden.
@@kristianspencer1978 This is just a rebadged HSV/Holden. Its just like the Monaro. That was Australian and then it was exported to the U.K and U.S under the Vauxhall and Pontiac brands
Kristian Spencer they only called it a VXR8 due to the Germans already having the Commodore name, and it actually is called an R8. I owned a 1999 VT model R8 Clubsport in the UK 2005-2007. That was a 5.7 litre, the VXR8 is a 6.2. They were made Adelaide South Australia but the VXR8’s were sent to HSV in Melbourne in OZ for the best bits to be attached. All before GM decided after sucking $250 million dollars from the OZ taxpayer to shut Holden down. Holden, is now gone. Just a name in history now. And yep, they do go like fuck. 😎
Hope they warmed that poor Lotus up properly before thrashing it, and drove it cool afterwards. Rule of thumb to keep your threepointsix alive: 20km warming up, 100km fun and 20km cooling down......thatˋs one tank.
@Bob 'lying jackass' Mule I never said 20km, I said you cool down with every turbo charged car. In fact, you do that with every car if you respect it. You're mixing comments of 2 different people. If anyone should delete their comment, it's you.
@@Armalyte78 Turbo Fan? You cannot stop a turbo rotating assembly from spinning if the engine is running as exhaust gas passes through the turbine to get into the exhaust causing the rotation. when you turn the car off you can still hear it spinning as it slows down.
@lucarioguy111 Lotus helped develop the C20XE engine used in the 16v GTE astra/GSI Cavalier and Astra as well as some models of Calibra (which, incidently there was a turbo variant). The XE lump has been widely acknowledged as one of the best engines ever built and is highly sort after.
@dragonny4master Even the VB-VK Commodores, although the outer skin resembled its German cousin, and there were things in nthe suspension they had in common, beneath the skin there's a whole other world going on. Holden realised early in the piece that they would have to stiffen the design of the Senator and Rekord bodies. They used their own engines and drivelines, and further strengthened the crossmembers to handle the weight and torque of 5 litre V8s
I visited your fair land in '99, and used to walk around with a boner for all those big beautiful motorway crushers you had there. I liked the Ford Falcon, but had such a horn for the Commodore. Absolutely gorgeous man's car. A big beautiful shapely beast. Loved them.
A good few years ago I was a passenger in a Lotus Carlton. I was scared to death but mesmerised at the same time. An early morning drive on the motorway, hardly any traffic and we went like stink. Fastest speed reached was 185 mph, pure magic.
I miss naturally aspirated cars. That seems to be the way we are going now slap turbos on smaller displacement engines. I know engines are a lot better now but, it can not be good for the longevity. I know with the eco boost, Ford has them tuned down to help with reliability. with all eco boost you can go to a garage right after you bye one plug it up to a computer and 2 min. you have 50 hp an 45 torque increase. It may be more then that now.
@ajball2000 How far down the line did the Vauxhall Senator get? At what time did they cease building them in England. The Rekord/Senator/Monza, as much as Europe doesn't want to admit it, benefited from some of Holden's R&D. On driving three of them from Melbourne to Sydney, Holden's engineers decided the body and suspension wasn't up to handling Australian roads, as a Commodore. One early model of Commodore, the VL featured a turbocharged Nissan RB30 engine, alongside a 5 litre V8
So that would be the "family race car" that was never actually raced? I'd welcome correction, but I didn't think the Lotus Carlton was used for racing. Besides, "family' race cars go back way further than 1990 - the Lotus Cortina, the Mini Cooper (maybe that was "the family rally car"?), and by the late 60s the Bathurst-spec cars were pretty swift in Australia, some with 4 doors, and all available to the general public.
If only holden gave lotus our VN Commodore or better still used the turbo from the Buick grand national since they are the same engine and fixed the handling
@xsatquest that's assuming it's worn out. I don't know much about the engine in the lotus, but lots of engines with over 100,000 miles are within 2 or 3% of their original horsepower.
If the black bat mobile had a refresh Like new fluids, shocks, springs, pads, tyres, OEM of course. They may of had a different result. Remember lotus are THE chassis masters. Period.
Although there's still a yawning gap between GM USA and Holden. The current Camaro was developed by Holden, and the present Chevrolet Caprice police cruiser is a rebadged Holden Caprice. It has been said that in places like Michigan, where GM's police cruiser import was first sent to work, if hoods see on in the rear mirror, they give up. Outrunning a Crown Victoria was much easier
You to do when you have a 6.2L Corvette engine? Supercharge it! Also i was driving a Opel Senator C40S Kompressor some years ago. God damn was that an amazing car. About 420 bhp and 3,6 seconds 0-100 km/h i don't remember how much torque it had.
for an old car thats astonishing. It kept it's modern counterpart fairly honest. Now , question is, how many miles did the Carlton engine have on the clock as over time and mileage the engine loses horsepower. I dare bet the vxr had significantly less engine mileage than the Charlton.
I love how a car with about half the power of an F1 car of the era was outrageous, but even then, the chance of realistically owning one was minuscule. Now any soccermom or salesman with zero driving skill can buy a 3t tractor with a lot more bhp on the never never, amd regularly do, yet nobody bats an eyelid. How times have changed.
@Mechknight73 Lotus Omega/Carlton needs the stig inside and VXR too :) You saw the part where it caught up? I bet the turbos didnt spool/she can't drive an old turbo car so well in the slow corners and the car didnt bounce back onto speed like the more crispy n/a engine. Some say theres lag when theres not enough rpm to even spool them up :D I think you need the engines max torque rpms, and whack the pedal to see how fast it spools, not idle speeds :)...
stinsgrunter Spiritual is the key word, in the same way that the Mazda MX-5 is the spiritual successor to the Lotus Elan and MGB, both the Carlton and VXR8 are fast, four door Vauxhall super saloons.
+ stinsgrunter, it's you that needs to do the research. The Commodore was based on the late 70's Opel models, possibly the Senator ?. In fact the first commodores had some parts that had 'Opel made in Germany' on them. One Australian company was importing the 2 door hatchback model from Germany and finishing it off with the V8 drivetrain, look it up. In the late 70's and early 80's the Opel Senator, Vauxhalls, and Commodores were dead ringers.
Nope, you still need to do the research @Noel Whittle. It is true that the VB Commodore had taken its styling from an amalgamation of the Rekord and Senator Opels, it shared far more underneath with the Kingswood in order to save costs, even though at $175mil back in the 70s it would have almost been cheaper to actually develop an entirely new car from scratch. The second and third generation cars were the same - style it based on the European Opels, and then build it around the previous running gear. In fact the second generation (VN) and third generation (VT) only shared the doors with the Opel "bases"
I'd go for the Carlton please .... but to think what Lotus could have done if they had been given a Cavalier instead which was way more nimble and easier to drive.
@eamh2002 Good point. I've only heard of the Lotus Carlton in the same way that most British people have heard of the Holden Torana; a vague notion of where it comes from, and what it can do. I think even Clarkson could do a better job of finding out what this one could REALLY do
Wow no way, that car did some damage (no not the citroen) "The truth is we just can't touch the thing, and it's unlikely we ever will" Urban Legend had it losing the eye in the sky too but it can't be proven - Ram raiding it was a mental idea for a mental car.
@@1962lp2h it's a fantastic story, I wouldn't mind getting hold of those plates one day, to the few people that know would be fun, I can easily believe it loosing the chopper, a truly iconic car partly due to 40ra
