Linda and Chris Deuter's Vauxhall Monaro - Reader Rides

By: Dave Carey, Photography by: Dave Carey

Date: 14.08.2024

Brash, blown and back on home soil, Linda and Chris Deuter's Vauxhall Monaro VXR500 is Luton in label only.

Linda and Chris' 2005 Vauxhall Monaro VXR500

When Linda and Chris Deuter decided they wanted to replace their HX Holden LE, the last thing they were expecting to buy was a Vauxhall. "We wanted an HSV GTO," Linda begins. "We’d just driven our HX LE back from the Monaro Nationals in Toowoomba, and even though we’d taken it easy and stopped along the way, it was pretty exhausting."

Linda and Chris have owned various collectible Holdens over the years, including SLR and SS Toranas, HJ and HX Monaro GTS sedans, a one-of-450 ‘Classic Edition’ HZ Statesman and no less than two 1976 HX Holden LE coupes, the latest of which they’d elected to be their long-distance cruiser. Linda continues, "We’re not afraid to take our cars down the road. We’ve driven them all over the country, but there’s no comparison with a modern car." 

Chris agrees, adding, "The LE’s got no cruise, so you’re constantly concentrating on your speed these days, and the air-con in them never worked well. There was a brochure that came with them from new that said something like, ‘please avoid using air-conditioners on hot days, when going up and down hills’." 

With a fondness for the factory fresh, modifying their LE just wasn’t an option, meaning to combine Monaro magic with modern motoring, they’d have to look to a V2 or VZ Monaro or same-era HSV Coupe GTO or GTS, built from 2001 to 2006. Linda continues the story, "So we started looking at the GTOs, but they were way out of our price range," she gestures to their supercharged silver beast, parked on Turn 3 of the Adelaide Steet Circuit, "until I stumbled across this on Carsales."

It was listed under ‘Holden Monaro’, but the text described it as a Vauxhall Monaro VXR500; one of just 18 built in that configuration and sold new in the UK. Holden’s export program to the USA is well known, with GM North America’s then chairman Bob Lutz publicly championing to get the Monaro Stateside. It landed, mildly restyled and badged ‘Pontiac GTO’ in 2004 and although it wasn’t an outrageous success by North American standards, it added 40,757 units to the Monaro’s build numbers – that’s over three times the number sold locally – before being discontinued in 2006. 

Less well known are the Monaros flung elsewhere around the globe, including 1065 to New Zealand, 990 to the Middle East as Chevrolet Lumina Coupe, and precisely 800 to the UK as the Vauxhall Monaro. Exported to England from 2004 to 2006, early cars were based on the V2, Series III Holden Monaro CV8, with later VZ-bodied cars, based on the HSV GTO and named Monaro VXR. With Holden and HSV being separate companies and rumours circulating of an unwillingness to share, the HSV Coupe series never received the ‘Monaro’ name here, something they must have sorted out by the advent of the HSV-built Vauxhall Monaro VXR. 

It was Vauxhall’s idea to grab a few uncouth muscle cars from the colonies and attempt to irreparably damage Jeremy Clarkson’s spine, something which was done with great success in 2005 on TV’s Top Gear. Press was favourable and sales were swift, with the initial batch of 240 CV8-based Monaros selling out in just three months. Within 12 months, however, it seemed that everyone in Great Britain who wanted a V8-powered Aussie muscle car had gone and bought one, because sales slowed dramatically.

Vauxhall dealership, Greens of Rainham, seeking to redress the situation, developed an upgrade pack with tuning house Wortec, which included performance improvements to the brakes and fuel system, among other things. The big news nestled in the valley of the V8, with the HSV-tuned 6.0 LS2 receiving a large, Roots-type twin-screw Harrop 112 supercharger. 

The plan was to knock together 50 Monaro VXR500s, so named for their 500ps of metric horsepower (493hp or 368kW in normal speak) but only 18 were built. Staggeringly, the VXR500 received the full blessing of Vauxhall and were considered ‘factory’; crucial if you need a warranty job, but also the reason the VXR500 is even allowed back in the country. Cars under 25 years old are only added to the SEVs list and eligible for import if they present with significant difference to vehicles made available here from new. This means a Vauxhall Monaro isn’t different enough to a Holden, but the ‘factory’ blower on the VXR500 ticks the box, as far as our government is concerned. 

Intrigued by this Monaro-based HSV with Vauxhall badges and a supercharger, Linda and Chris contacted the seller, got the backstory, then flew to Sydney to see it for themselves. Linda says, "It was a young fellow who bought it at auction and brought it back from the UK," she says. "And he was up front, saying that he’d got it at a good price and was hoping to make a few dollars on it here."

Whether by careful research or dumb luck, he’d bought the right Monaro to import, but his visions of a tidy profit swiftly evaporated in COVID-related logistical complications, sharply rising interest rates and an unforeseen, 33 per cent luxury car tax.

With the seller keen to get it off his mortgage, a deal was done and the VXR500 was trucked to Linda and Chris in Adelaide, its original birthplace and spiritual home. Upon arrival, Chris found a few pin-dents that needed massaging out, plus a couple of paint chips, most of which you could probably blame on the first owner: Vauxhall. 

That’s right; this Vauxhall Monaro VXR500, built 2005 and first registered 2007, was not actually sold until it went up for auction in October 2021. Like Holden, the UK’s former GM subsidiary has a collection of historic cars retained or repurchased by the company, and like Holden, circumstances meant they had to trim their fleet. It made sense that they’d offload the Monaro, despite its unique UK specification, as it’s a Vauxhall in badge only.

As part of the Vauxhall Heritage Collection, it was spanked by plenty of journos over the years, including an effusive Richard Hammond, who drove the car for his ‘Icons’ series in Top Gear magazine. The previous owner supplied a full set of HSV GTO badges, but Chris and Linda are having none of that. Linda says," We love the history it came with." To which Chris adds, "And besides, it’s not a GTO. It’s better."

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