2009 Herrod G6E Turbo vs CSV Sportswagon vs Walkinshaw Clubsport comparison review: classic MOTOR

Overkill is everywhere. A hollow-point bullet is designed to not just shoot stuff, but to explode once it has pierced whatever it hits. Clearly, simply shooting a hole in something is not enough for some people.

This feature was first published in MOTOR magazine’s February 2009 issue.

In the case of my grandmother, strawberries just weren’t sweet enough – she used to sprinkle sugar over them. She was almost blind from diabetes, but she could find that sugar-bowl by feel. But overkill is not always a bad thing.

Forget that a Commodore with a 6.0- or 6.2-litre V8 is more than even the most fervent tappet-head was dreaming about even a decade ago. And forget that a home-brewed Falcon six with a V8-bashing factory intercooled turbo was equally the stuff of fantasy. Forget it all, because the game has really moved on.

See, there will always be a core group of people who reckon the stock stuff is a bit on the wimpy side. And it’s not that the factories don’t cater for them, because that’s the whole point; people like that don’t want what everybody else can buy off the shelf. They want more. They want something special. And they want it now.

Of course, as the off-the-peg gear gets better and faster, so too does the aftermarket up the ante in response, continuing to give the world’s headbangers what they crave. Or more.

But more than that, the aftermarket modifiers haven’t just had to get more creative, they’ve had to get a whole lot smarter. Computer control of everything from the injection to the glovebox lid has meant that modifiers have had to get savvy and get there quickly. And when you sample the latest offerings from the mainstream modifiers (now there’s an oxymoron) you can see that overkill has never been more tempting.

Let’s start with the Walkinshaw Performance treatment, as applied to an HSV Clubsport. Right from the moment you sidle up to it, it’s a bit of an eyeball wrencher.

Same goes for the 22-inch alloys, which are really the only way to make such big brakes look lost and lonely inside the rim. More than that, the painted-on 245/30 front and (squeeze me?) 285/25 rear tyres eradicate any ride quality once you’re moving beyond urban speeds, or the bumps get bigger than pimples.

I’m also left wondering whether anybody at WP has actually driven this car any distance, because pretty much any bump is enough to send the front tyres and wheelarches into serious interface. Even in a dead straight line, the fronts smack into the arches with wince-inducing results and, frankly, you couldn’t live with it like that.

Keeping it all out of the dirt is WP’s suspension package with shorter springs and a shorter shock body, as well as revised bump-stops. But, again, those monster wheels compromise the end result; they’re so damn tall that the Clubby looks like a rollerskate on steroids.

But you and I both know that it’s what’s under the lid that counts here. And in that regard, the Walky has got things absolutely covered off.

The 6.2 retains the stock 10.7:1 compression ratio, which is a bit of a surprise when you see what’s been bolted to the top of it. The twin-screw blower is painted to match the rest of the car and sits there like a squat little red Buddha, calling the shots to the tune of 470kW by the time 6500rpm has turned up.

With the six-speed manual (and a tougher LS7-spec clutch), there’s an insane level of squirt on tap along with a distinctive – and loud – blower whine that won’t please everyone, but which we reckon sounds the biz.

The other VE-based gadget featured here started out as a Commodore SS-V Series Sportwagon with a manual box and the optional 20-inch rims. And while it’s the least modified of this lot, its mods are the important ones. There’s a set of lowered springs, but it’s the supercharger installation by Corsa Special Vehicles that defines this very quick family truckster.

So, the centrifugal blower makes sense because the 6.0-litre feels absolutely like a stocker as you slip out the standard clutch and haul into the traffic flow. But bury the boot and by 5000rpm, the SS V’s force-fed bent eight is attempting to paste 300kW – call it around 400kW at the crank – straight to the deck.

There’s a nice ramp-up in urge as the blower gets into its stride and the engine feels like its welling up to something really special. Which it is. And let’s not forget that the basic engine (and CSV doesn’t so much as lift a cylinder head) is a pretty handy thing from the get-go anyway, so a lack of grunt is never the reality.

The third hell-raiser here is the work of Melbourne-based tuner Rob Herrod, who has been spinning spanners on blue-oval gear for more years than he cares to remember.

Like CSV’s Sportwagon, stealth is the theme here. And the blacked-out brightwork, including the side indicators, gives the G6E Turbo a smooth, classy (if slightly sinister) look that won’t have the rozzers doing head-spins.

For a start, the brakes are truly mighty. They’re essentially PBR’s M-Series performance brakes: six-pot fronts and four-pot rears, with huge two-piece rotors. And as a straight-from-the-catalogue set-up, they take some beating.

Round bits are 20-inch German-sourced rims, 8.5-inches wide and loaded with 245/35 Dunlop Sport Maxx tyres. The rubber is not as aggressive as some – the Walky, for instance – but it’s also not as unforgiving, either. A new spring package drops it all down a bit but, in terms of ride quality, it keeps the end result quite civilised.

“(This kit) has a fairly easy 400kW in it,” says Herrod. And you can thank a touch over 1.0bar of boost (up from the standard car’s 0.6bar) for the bulk of that. But there are no secret herbs and spices here; what’s working for it is the inherent tunability in modern turbo motors and careful matching of the various components. Herrod may have made his name dealing with V8 Henrys but, if this car is anything to go by, he stands to become the go-to guy for boosted sixes, too.

Given that you can turn up at any of these tuning shops and pick the eyes out of the various bits and pieces on offer, there are no ‘standard’ WP, CSV or Herrod vehicles.

So there’s really only one thing to do: find a deserted runway and have a Driftbox shootout at 10 paces.

The big surprise was that the CSV Sportwagon was the quickest. And since it’s probably a full 70kW down on the Walky, the result raised more than a few eyebrows.

The 80 to 120km/h times paint a clearer pic. Even in sixth gear (where there’s no wheelspin), the WP car (9.9sec) is more than four seconds faster than the CSV (14.1sec). Its low- to mid-rpm poke is simply stunning.

So what’s going on? It’s simple really. The CSV gets its power down better because there’s less of it to contend with as you release the clutch from standstill. And, thus, it just gets out of the hole a whole lot more effectively on meagre street tyres.

It’s worth noting that the CSV was also more consistent than the other two on the less-than-perfect surface, reeling off low-13s time and again.The Walky, meanwhile, only scored the one low-13 from a fluky launch, after a series of mid-13 runs where it just flat-out refused to hook up.

The Herrod car is not quite as flaky off idle as the Walkinshaw-modded car, but it does build boost quickly, which comes in with enough of a bang to light up the rears early on in first gear and right to the hotmix-lifting end of second. If anything, it’s even worse than the Clubby once it’s really into its stride.

Our 0-400m best in the G6E was a 13.6 at 174km/h, with a 0-100m time of 5.4 seconds. Still quick, mind you, but well off what an engine and transmission of this calibre are capable of.

In its simplest form, the CSV Sportwagon is travelling faster than the other two when the real surge arrives. It finds more traction and gets on with it while the other pair are turning their rear rubber into very expensive atoms.

As far as the rest of each package goes, the Herrod-modded Ford is the pick of the crop in terms of living with the thing day-to-day. Jump straight into it from either VE and the Ford’s sharper steering and lighter feel is immediately obvious. And while the big-bore exhaust is a bit noisier, it’s never drummy or annoyingly in-your-face.

But the VE stuff isn’t perfect either. You still get the feeling, as you roll around in those big chairs and grapple with the huge tiller, that this was a car made for man-bears. And I’m no tiddler.

In the case of the Walky, the big issues are the wheel-to-arch clearance (or lack of it), the jarring ride and the sheer lairiness of its look. And while the CSV’s uncomplicated nature is nice – as is the big, deep exhaust note – it’s a bit on the feeble side when it comes to brakes.

But all those things can be amended, or eliminated completely, by a simple fiddle with the spec sheet. Our choice would be the stealth approach, but with the mega anchors, full-house engine mods and a set of lightweight 20s with sticky rubber. And if that sounds like a winner, then judging by this lot, you’ve never been so spoiled for choice.

The Walkinshaw Performance Clubsport tops the ladder here, partly because it’s the most comprehensive makeover, but also because the Clubby is the dearest donor car to start with.

So when you add the $36,360 worth of WP mods to the basic car’s $64,990, you wind up with $101,350. However, we’d ditch a lot of it and just go for the blower ($15,500), the exhaust ($2050), suspension ($690), oil cooler ($1250) and the heavy-duty LS7 clutch ($1500). Which would leave you with a $85,980 proposition. And a very wide smile.

All up you’re looking at $78,965, but you easily can see where your dough has gone.

The bargain is CSV’s Sportwagon, which adds just the blower kit and intercooler at $12,000, and $700 worth of springs. Call it $64,990. But it could use a brake upgrade.

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