It’s easy to forget looking at its handsome but otherwise painfully bland range these days, but there was quite a long time in the 2000s and 2010s, when Vauxhall was part of General Motors, when it would happily sell you a snarling Holden muscle car with its lion badge prised off and replaced by a griffin.
First came the Monaro coupe, then the VXR8, a rebadge of the shoutier, sportier versions of the Holden Commodore saloons. This was back when the Commodore was an Aussie-developed and built full-size saloon, not its final generation which was, in a sort of sad full-circle move, a rebadged Vauxhall Insignia.
Anyway, the Monaro and VXR8 are now certified cult classics here in the UK, and if you want a coupe or saloon, there’s usually a decent amount available second-hand. But what if you wanted a big Aussie muscle car, but also had to carry lots of stuff? There was in fact a solution to this conundrum (two, if you count the equally scarce Maloo pickup), but we’re not sure anyone ever took Vauxhall up on the offer.
In 2013, the company announced it would start selling a VXR8 Tourer. Essentially a Luton-flavoured rebadge of the Australian-market HSV Clubsport R8 Tourer, up front it was business as usual for anyone familiar with the VXR8 saloon: a 6.2-litre GM LS3 V8 sent 425bhp to the rear wheels by way of a six-speed manual or six-speed auto.
Out the back, though, the VXR8 Tourer had another trick up its sleeve: with 895 litres of cargo space with the back seats up, and 2000 litres with them down, it had the biggest carrying capacity of any estate car on sale in the UK at the time. In fact, even the load-lugging leader of today’s estate car crop, the Skoda Superb, only manages a piddly 690 litres seats-up and 1920 with them down.
And yet, the VXR8 Tourer was also a V8 muscle car that would hit 60mph in 4.9 seconds and top out at an electronically-limited 155mph. Talk about dual personalities. Best of all, it cost £49,500, at a time when the Mercedes E63 AMG Estate and Audi RS6 Avant were in the £75k range, and the BMW M5 Touring… didn’t exist.
Surely, this combo of performance, practicality and pricing would make the VXR8 Tourer a smash hit? Erm, no. In fact, we can’t find any evidence that more than a single example ever existed. Howmanyleft.com, the best resource we have for checking existing numbers of cars on the road (if not necessarily watertight) doesn’t list any as registered or SORN’d. If there are any in the DVLA’s database, they’re lumped in with the saloons.
We can’t find anyone documenting their experiences on any Vauxhall-based forums, and there certainly aren’t any to be found on all the usual second-hand car sites. In fact, Google ‘Vauxhall VXR8 Tourer’ and all you get are results featuring the original blue press car, wearing the ‘DE51 RED’ plate that Vauxhall liked to stick on its Aussie imports back then.
That car was apparently up for sale in the summer of 2014, and that’s the only evidence we have that someone bought one of these charismatic wagons. Know any different, or happen to own that very car? Please get in touch. It’s keeping us up at night.
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