Holden Special Vehicles has ended its long run with building and tuning Holden Commodores. Now, the future is more closely aligned with the Holden brand itself. And part of its future includes converting left-hand drive cars to right-hand drive.
Specifically, HSV will perform the left-to-right surgery on two Chevrolet models: the Camaro and Silverado 2500HD. Motoring was invited to have a look at the re-engineering process behind the Silverado 2500HD, and we must say, it’s a lot of work.
The truck arrives from its Michigan manufacturing facility as any North American would find it on a dealership lot. Quickly, that changes. HSV employees remove the body from the frame to begin the re-engineering process, which includes rewelding the firewall and installing equipment on the opposite side of the car. Workers disassemble the essential functions (HVAC, steering, braking) to then reinstall the equipment on the right side of the pickup.
In the process, everything is removed from the cab.
The entire dashboard is rebuilt and HSV even modifies the truck’s seats to truly make the Silverado 2500HD a right-hand-drive vehicle. It’s not a quick chop job by any means.
But, all the work will cost buyers $114,990 AUD, or about $87,000 USD with today’s exchange rates. Expect a similarly daunting process to prepare the sixth-generation Camaro for Australia, too.
Comments
Amazing. I always wondered how this was accomplished. And this happens for each and every vehicle ordered?! Thats a lot of love for Chevy right there. Thanks very much for the insight.
I wonder why GM is the only automobile manufacturer on this planet who still develops cars with left hand steering only.
The LHD versions of this pickup should come from the factory, without having to be disassembled.
Really crazy.
Or HSV could buy a CKD kit and do the right-hand conversion during the build up phase. There’s some idle facilities in Elizabeth they could use.
As the ‘Rado is their No. 1 truck you would have thought GM would have made it an international model with RHD/LHD platforms like the FMC F150 and now the Ranger are about to be.
Such short-sightedness GM! I truely believe Barra only wants GM to be a US/Canada/Chinese focussed company in the long run bcz 2bn potential customers and damn the other 7bn.
Why not just make them both LHD and RHD from the factory and HSV can do the same enhancements as they have done in the past, regardless of what the vehicle is ?
When we were manufacturing Holden cars in Australia, we engineered them for the enjoyment of people of the entire planet in both LHD and RHD.
GM clearly don’t care for RHD countries and are giving those sales away on a platter to their competitors.
GM has a provincial outlook.
Only in their European and Korean dependencies (former for Europe), all cars runs off the assembly line in both LHD and RHD versions.
My WAG is that a third of mankind (or more) lives in countries where the automobiles are supposed to drive on the left side of the road — nearly all countries on the rim of the Indian Ocean except the stretch from the former Italian colony Somalia via the Arab peninsula to Iran. Plus islands like Japan, and three in Europe (Ireland, Great Britain, Malta) plus Cyprus (at least the southern, greek dominated south of the island).
How can an automobile company claiming a global outlook can design cars for one side of the road only!
35% of humanity lives in countries where the cars have to drive on the left side of the road.
I took en.Wikpedia’s “List of countries and dependencies by population” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population , put the table in a Excel table and added a column for R or L, using the information in the individual countries’ en.Wikipedia-articles.
I have to admit that in my previous post I forgot New Zealand, which is not bordering the Indian Ocean; also some landlocked former British colonies in South and Eastern Africa drive on the left.
Let’s just blame the Brits, most of the left side countries are current/former commonwealth except Japan,
but Aus is the only nation I know of who will not allow the sale of new LHD cars so a conversion is required.
Indonesia, the 2nd largest country driving on the left, was Netherland’s colony (but England engaged their troops to force Indonesia back under colonial rule after Japan’s capitulation), and Thailand has never been a directly Europan ruled colony.
Afghanistan also has a rule against the import of right-steered cars (mainly from Pakistan and India).
But all this is history, just as the rise of English to the worldwide language of communication due to two subsequent english speaking empires “ruling the waves”.
To blame are really automobile manufacturers who do design cars without the possibilty to produce them with for steering from the right and from the left. GM is the only one which I know of.
Well, the thing I’ve been mulling over as I read the comments is that first of all, GM has been backing out of non-moneymakers that also happen to be RHD builders. It sold Opel, now its execs are now leaving like cockroaches when the light is turned on. Also, it pulled out of India, because they see no future there (infrastructure? emerging market not emerging quickly enough?) And finally, the thing about Holden not building RHD from the jump is who knows? …but at this point the brand is failing, why are they going to spend more on it? Its own Chief officer said said in an article elsewhere on this blog. Australians don’t even like Holden. Folks there are buying bow ties to replace their lions with, for crying out loud. So the appearance that GM won’t back a RHD may just be a money thing.
(As a non-topical aside…well, of course Chrysler is gonna make RHDs, they were purchased by Fiat (yes, I know it its a bigger story than that), which according to the most recent Consumer reports ranks Dead Last in customer satisfaction. Have you seen the abomination that is the Jeep Renegade? This thing looks like a Fiat 500 had a drunken hook-up with a Wrangler, in my opinion. Only my opinion. )
However, it seems to me that GM has been churning out RHD Trailblazers, Colorados, and Captivas at its Rayong, Thailand plant for a few years now, so I’m not sure where the sentiment the GM doesn’t make RHDs comes from exactly. See its Thailand facility website for more information.
http://en.chevrolet.co.th/about-us/about-gm-thailand.html
I was thinking of the Thai plant, but was and am not sure if this plant caters only for the RHD market or does produce both LHD and RHD versions from the same assembly line as those factories which I mentioned in my May 25 @11h47 post.
What I can’t understand, is that GM still develop cars for LHD only.
BTW, the Jeep Wrangler is the brother of the Fiat 500-X… don’t confuse the two, they do look different despite their common technical basis.
PS:
Peter Hahnenberger, who became CEO of Holden after GM failed to impose him as CEO of Opel, was responsible for lowering Australian import tariffs for cars so that the Thailand GM factory could export more cars to Australia… As president of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, Hanenberger influenced government policy. BTW, Holden once held 23% of the Rayong factory’s capital. Hanenberger also played a role in GM International Operations and in the acquisitoin of Daewoo Motors, today’s GM Korea.
PS2:
GM’s LHD only development became laughing stock when GM paid 500 million for advertising with England’s Manchester United football company, but could not provide Chevrolet Corvettes in RHD versions to the ManU players…
Hey, appreciate your thoughtfulness immensely, especially PS and PS2(really?!)! I’m certainly no industry insider, only an adjacent industry, but simply from gallery images and messaging on the factory site, they supply RHD vehicles to Pac Rim markets at the very least.
(RE: the Wrangler, this was snark aimed only at *Renegade and its design heritage.)
addition to PS1:
There are articles on Peter Hanenberger in both the English and German language Wikipedias, and they are complementary, I mean it is useful to read both.
and to PS2:
Besides Corvette and Camarao, Chevrolet could offer with RHD only what GM Korea was producing and exporting to Europe (until K.T. Neumann, the last CEO of Opel under GM) called it to halt, i.e. relatively small cars for a football showman who is bribed with millions of EUR or GBP or USD…
The Fiat 500X and the Jeep Renegade were developed in Italy from the Fiat Punto. Nothing to do with the Wrangler.
Chrysler-Jeep made all their vehicles in RHD in the 1990s. Its not actually that hard.
“The Fiat 500X and the Jeep Renegade were developed in Italy from the Fiat Punto. Nothing to do with the Wrangler.”
For your convenience, here’s my original statement: “This thing looks like a Fiat 500 had a drunken hook-up with a Wrangler, in my opinion. Only my opinion.”
Two people now have gone out of their way to point out that the Wrangler has nothing do with the Fiat. I know this. I do in fact, thoroughly know this, my friends. My *joke* friends was that the Renegade, whose design was in the hands of the Italians, was that the Renegade’s design looks like the the love child of the two. If you read in context, I don’t really seriously imply … oh never mind. (sigh)
I am from Zambia, South Central Africa, and I am also from the US, I live in both places. But I think the people on this thread were asking why GM does not make some vehicle models in RHD. I also noticed that people on this thread keep referring to LHD. The vehicles are already LHD, but they need to be converted to RHD.
In Africa and Asia GM markets the Isuzu, which is the Colorado in Asia and the US.,They added another one which I believe is built on the same chassis as a Colorado call the Canyon. The reality is that there are more LHD drivers around the world than there is RHD. China LHD, Entire middle east with maybe the exception of Egypt is LHD. North America, the Caribbean, Nigeria, Congo, most of the Francophone countries in west Africa, Angola, South America and most of Europe.
The only countries that use RHD are the India, UK, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Lesotho, Mozambique. The population that uses LHD is therefore much bigger in LHD because those countries have spending power.
So the question everyone should be asking is why GMC does not make the Sierra Denali in right hand drive? I think there answer is simple, I went looking to buy a Denali Sierra today and the think is just too big, you would not be able to drive it in Europe, Zambia etc.
The countries where cars drive on the left side of the street are more than what Don Gray writes up. The cover about one third of the planet’s land surface and include about one third of the planet’s human population. The articles on individual countries in en.Wikipedia.org contain in the infobox “quick info” if this country drives on the left or right.
In Europe countries besides the UKoGBaNI driving on the left are former British colonies: Ireland, Malta, and Cyprus (well, Cyprus is member of EU, but geographically rather in Asia). Egypt drives on the right.
One could say, that all countries bordering the Indian Ocean, except the range from Somalia to Iran, do drive an the left (also Namibia, and Uganda which is landlocked), and Myanmar. Don Gray forgot to mention Indonesia, one of the most populous countries of this planet, and Thailand.
The question is not why GMC does not produce this special model Sierra Denali in LHD and RHD drives right from the factory, but why GM’s technical developement center in Warren is incapable to develop any car to be produced in RHD and LHD variants right from the factory.