The Holden That Almost Became A Buick

The most famous Holden product to ever wear a Buick badge is the Chinese-market Park Avenue, a car that Buick dealers inexplicably rejected. But back in the mid-1990s, GM apparently planned to use the VT Commodore architecture as the basis for a new Buick sedan, previewed in the XP2000 concept above. Squint really hard and you can see a resemblance in the basic shapes of the two cars. Since the XP2000 was a concept, it's likely that the Buick production version would have stuck closer to the Holden design, hardpoints and all. The concept used a 5.0L small-block V8 and GM's 4-speed transmission, but a smaller displacement V8 was rumored at the time. The XP2000 had a lot of features that were considering cutting edge for its 1995 debut but are relatively mundane today; a crude version of a lane keep assist, adaptive cruise control  as well as a vehicle key that could automatically adjust things like seat position, mirrors and climate control based on driver preferences. None of these would be earth-shattering today but they were pie-in-the-sky ideas nearly 20 years ago. The biggest payoff may have been the readiness of the VT chassis to adapt left-hand drive. Without it, we would never have gotten the Pontiac GTO, and other export markets would have missed out on the Chevrolet Lumina.  If anything, the XP2000 is another footnote in the stilted story of GM's attempts to bring the Holden Commodore to North America.   from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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