General Motors might have driven a stake through Holden’s heart in 2020, but not before Walkinshaw Performance built one final, unhinged love letter from Australia. Now, that exact vehicle – the stillborn HSV Colorado SportsCat V8 prototype – is up for sale, offering a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar glimpse at the Ford Ranger Raptor rival that never was.
Currently listed by Young Timers Garage (YTG) with an asking price of $299,990, excluding government charges, Chassis E001 holds a unique and somewhat tragic place in local motoring history. It is widely regarded as the final vehicle to ever be plated by Holden Special Vehicles (HSV), representing Walkinshaw’s very last true V8 engineering undertaking before the Holden brand was permanently retired.
The premise of the vehicle was simple but highly effective. Seeking to properly weaponise the Colorado-based SportsCat, Walkinshaw engineers threw the standard 2.8-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel in the bin. In its place, they shoehorned a naturally aspirated 6.2-litre LT1 V8 into the front, sourced directly from the Chevrolet Camaro and C7 Corvette.
The result delivered a substantial 350kW of power and 650Nm of torque. To handle the output, the V8 was paired with a 10-speed automatic transmission and a heavy-duty four-wheel drive transfer case pilfered from the larger Chevrolet Silverado. Out on the tarmac, the prototype was capable of dispatching the 0-100km/h sprint in under 5.0 seconds – figures that would have made it the fastest and most powerful dual-cab ute in Australian showrooms at the time.
Walkinshaw fully intended to put the V8 SportsCat into local production. However, the business case evaporated overnight in early 2020 when General Motors announced the sudden closure of the Holden brand and the subsequent sale of the Thai manufacturing plant responsible for producing the Colorado donor vehicles. With no base chassis supply to build upon, the V8 program was instantly dead in the water, leaving Chassis E001 as a complete one-of-one unicorn.
Cosmetically, the prototype wears a heavy dose of nostalgia. It is finished in ‘Panorama Silver’; a direct and deliberate tribute to the iconic VL Commodore SS Group A SV “Walkinshaw” – the very first car to wear a HSV badge. The sale includes a red and black leather sports interior, upgraded AP Racing brakes, a bespoke suspension lift, and the famous ‘SV8CAT’ Victorian promotional plates used during the vehicle’s initial media tour.
With the odometer currently reading 25,100km, the $299,990 asking price represents a significant premium over its last public appearance. The exact same prototype previously changed hands in late 2021, when it was secured at auction for a $205,000 winning bid.
Whether the market dictates another $100,000 in appreciation for a cancelled dual-cab remains to be seen, but as the definitive full stop on the HSV V8 story, it remains an irreplaceable piece of Australian automotive history.
