VE Commodore

The Holden VE Commodore (2007–2010) was the last Holden of the Project Blueprint era built on its own body-and-chassis — the model state before the revised VE II Commodore and, ultimately, the control chassis of Car of the Future.

Project Blueprint — parity, own chassis

The VE was a parity car, not a control-chassis one: each team still designed and built its own chassis to the standardised Blueprint geometry. It ran the marque-common double-wishbone front (adjustable camber, cockpit-adjustable anti-roll bar), a live rear axle located by four parallel links and a Watts linkage on coil-over adjustable dampers (Division C fixing a control damper list from 2006), a front-mounted Holinger six-speed, the Dunlop control tyre, the mandated control ECU and a 1355 kg minimum. The common control chassis only arrived with Car of the Future in 2013.

Body & aero

The VE carried the road car's silhouette worked to Blueprint's parity-controlled envelope — a front splitter and undertray and a boot-mounted rear wing. The aero was a controlled package aimed at holding the two marques close on downforce and drag, set by the technical rules rather than freely developed or published as per-car figures.

Getting the VE into that envelope took real surgery. The road VE's wheelbase was 93 mm longer than Blueprint's mandated 2822 mm, so the race car was physically shortened back to the common figure, its roof lowered 83 mm (through thinner sill panels) and its front narrowed with composite race-only mudguards to match the Falcon at the axle centre-lines. Holden Motor Sport set the aero baseline with high-speed straight-line runs to ~200 km/h on the Woomera rocket-range runway, then a TEGA side-by-side test against a Falcon finalised the homologated package. On that homologated car the prototype's large rear-wing end-plates were cut right down, which left the VE a little short of rear downforce against the FG Falcon — a deficit later cured on the VF.

Engine & driveline

Power came from the Holden Motorsport 5.0-litre V8 with HRT-developed heads — a 90-degree pushrod unit on the control ECU (media guides name MoTeC), estimated around 635+ bhp, limited to 7500 rpm at a 10:1 compression ceiling. Drive ran through the Holinger six-speed and a "Motive 9-inch" differential on the control 3.25 / 3.5 / 3.7 final-drive set (plus the 3.15 long-circuit ratio for Bathurst), via an AP Racing triple-plate carbon clutch.

Brakes, wheels & tyres

The works VE ran Alcon six-piston front monobloc calipers (with a removable bridge bar) on 375 mm discs and Alcon four-piston rears on 343 mm discs — the rears slightly larger than the earlier Blueprint Holdens — with O.Z 17×11 magnesium wheels. None of these was universal: brake make and wheel supplier varied by team (the control-brake list from 2006 approved AP Racing, Brembo, Alcon, PFC and Harrop). The tyre was the single-make Dunlop control.

Evolution

The VE raced 2007–2010 before the Series II VE II Commodore took over for 2011.

Sources: harvested V8 Supercar media-guide spec sheets (Commodore VE) + Division C technical rules — Grade B; Project Blueprint standardisation — Grade B/D.