Brisbane International Motor Show

[TonyfromOz]

Gentlemen.
The word 'International' you might consider a misnomer for a city of barely a million and a half, but it is our State Capital here in Queensland.
Having said that, Suzuki released their new all wheel drive 'Crossover', and Toyota released their new Tarago people mover, the first with a V6, and there were also other vehicles released. Having said that, the show, as large as it might be here in Australia, is tiny when compared with the Detroit show, or the Chicago show currently under way this week.

Having said that, the main reason I even start this Thread is that one of today's entries on 'autoblog.com' has a story about the show, but mostly dealing with that uniquely Australian phenomenon, the 'ute'. You call them Pickups but these are smaller than what you guys envisage, basically a sedan with a bay for the ubiquitous 'plywood'.
The link has a photo gallery showing the Holden and the Ford utes, and you can see that these are nothing like the F Series Fords or the Chevy Silverado at all.

Also embedded in this link are a further 3 links, and the top one does not work, but the other 2 show some of the Performance vehicles from Ford and Holden on display at the show.
One of the vehicles is the Holden VE Commodore SS 6.4 Litre V8, released today at the Chicago show as the new and much talked about (rear wheel drive) Pontiac G8, opinion saying that Pontiac might indeed have found a winner with this one. Also released today in Chicago is a car we have had here in Australia for nearly 10 years now, the Astra. I have the 2001 model in the old body shape, and this new shape will be released in the US as the Saturn Astra, basically the same car, albeit LHD, as the original Opel Astra, rebadged Vauxhall Astra in the UK and the Holden Astra here in Australia.

The link is to the story about the utes, and there is a further link in the same story, mentioning the possibility of the newer version Holden ute having it's delivery date brought forward, and that the platform will be used for the construction of a LHD version for sale into the US, someone cheekily suggesting that it might even be a revived Chev El Camino.

Farbeit from me to offer comment one way or the other, but you guys will just love these utes, just like we do here in Oz.

Tony.

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