BIG drives and big skies. It’s the heartland of Aussie motoring, delving deep into the vastness that would’ve so intimidated the invading white fellas 230 years ago. And so this rite of passage continues with the German-born Holden ZB Commodore.

Replicating our exhaustive ‘consumer test’ of a lime-green Holden HQ Kingswood way back in 1972, we pointed two ZB liftbacks – an all-wheel-drive V6 Commodore VXR and a front-drive turbo-diesel Calais – towards north-western New South Wales to see just how well these European interlopers take to Aussie tarmac. Exceedingly well, as it turns out, to the soundtrack of tyre hum and cracking stereo phonics.

Given the sparseness of traffic even in 2018, we deemed 125-135km/h to be a suitable gait for our pair of ZBs, in much the same fashion that Peter Robinson found that 80mph (128km/h) was an acceptably brisk pace for the four-speed, six-cylinder HQ. But where Robbo had no trouble discovering the HQ’s actual top speed (a paltry 154km/h), we didn’t have the chutzpah to test each ZB’s peak velocities, both well in excess of 200km/h and a jail-able offence in today’s language.

For the full story, and our entire 3000-plus kilometre ZB Commodore extravaganza, grab the February 2018 issue of Wheels magazine, on sale on February 22.