Monaro one of a kind

By ALASTAIR SLOANE

Forget the special-edition badges of the big-name European, British and American carmakers, the most exclusive car in the world is a ... Holden.

A left-hand-drive Holden Monaro coupe, with bits and pieces from the latest Pontiac GTO. One-off, painted black, with leather interior, high-performance brake package, 5.7-litre V8 engine and six-speed manual gearbox.

It was unveiled in Melbourne and at the wheel was Holden Australia's 61-year-old managing director Peter Hanenberger.

He looked pretty comfortable, too, settling into the driver's seat and wheeling the rear-drive two-door around Holden's proving ground at Yang Yang.

So he should have been. The car is his, a retirement present from General Motors. His colleagues say it is Holden's smallest export programme ever.

Hanenberger will take the Monaro back to his native Germany when his 45-year career with GM ends on January 1. He returns to his home town of Weisbaden, an ancient Roman spa near Frankfurt.

"I'm really looking forward to driving it on the autobahns," he said.

The left-hook Monaro is the only one in the world. It is based on the platform of the Pontiac GTO that Holden is building for the United States market.

The body shell is all Monaro but the car uses the higher-performance engine and gearbox from the GTO. Brakes are by Holden Special Vehicles. The exhaust system is Australian-built, too, toned down for German noise-emission requirements.

Engineer Hanenberger started as a trainee with Opel in 1958. He was a GM Group vice-president when he became head of Holden in 1999.

It was his second stint with Holden. He worked in Melbourne on the Commodore programme in the 70s and 80s. Holden underwent an aggressive expansion of its product line-up and manufacturing capacity under Hanenberger's tenure.

He championed the expansion of Holden's research and product development and played a key role in the growth of GM's Asia-Pacific operations.