The Holden WB series is an automobile which was produced by

Holden Holden, formerly known as General Motors-Holden, was an Australian subsidiary company of General Motors. It was an Australian automobile manufacturer, importer, and exporter which sold cars under its own marque in Australia. In its last thr ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

from 1980 to 1984. It is a facelifted version of the Holden HZ series, which it replaced. Unlike the HZ and every other full size Holden series before it, the Holden WB was only offered in commercial vehicle bodystyles with no sedan or wagon passenger car variants. The long-

wheelbase In both road and rail vehicles, the wheelbase is the horizontal distance between the centers of the front and rear wheels. For road vehicles with more than two axles (e.g. some trucks), the wheelbase is the distance between the steering (fron ...

WB series models were marketed under the separate

Statesman A statesman or stateswoman typically is a politician who has had a long and respected political career at the national or international level. Statesman or Statesmen may also refer to: Newspapers United States * ''The Statesman'' (Oregon), a ...

marque, absent of all Holden branding.

Model range

The Holden WB series was released in April 1980, the range consisting of two

coupe utility A coupe or coupé (, ) is a passenger car with a sloping or truncated rear roofline and two doors. The term ''coupé'' was first applied to horse-drawn carriages for two passengers without rear-facing seats. It comes from the French past parti ...

models, a panel van and a cab chassis truck.Terry Bebbington & Michel A Malik, 45 Years of Holden, 1994, pages 72-74 The Kingswood panel van, Sandman utility and Sandman panel van models were not carried over from the HZ commercial range. The WB range therefore consisted of: * Holden (utility and van) * Holden Kingswood (utility) * Holden One Tonner (cab chassis) The Kingswood utility featured a black grate style grille and rectangular headlights, unlike the more basic models which shared a divided grille with circular headlights. In August 1980, the base models received an update which gave them the same frontal treatment as the Kingswood utility. Plans to produce sedan and wagon versions of the Holden WB reached an advanced stage but ultimately were not pursued.Tony Davis, Ewan Kennedy & Alisator Kennedy, The Holden Heritage, Eighth Edition, 1998, page 59 These variants would have supplemented the new

Holden Commodore The Holden Commodore is a full-size car that was sold by Holden from 1978 to 2020. It was manufactured from 1978 to 2017 in Australia and from 1979 to 1990 in New Zealand, with production of the locally manufactured versions in Australia endi ...

models in the family car market.

Statesman

The Statesman WB range of long-wheelbase luxury sedans, developed by General Motors-Holden’s in parallel with the Holden WB series, was released in May 1980. Like their Statesman HZ predecessors, the two models in the Statesman WB range, the de Ville and the Caprice, were marketed as "Statesman" rather than as "Holden".Tony Davis and John Wright, Spotlight on Holden Commodore 1978-1988, (Including HSV and Statesman WB), 1994, page 9 File:1982 Holden WB utility (2015-06-18) 02.jpg, Holden WB utility File:1980-85 WB One Tonner Bamboo

.JPG, Holden One Tonner (WB), early with circular headlights File:1982 Holden WB panel van (23151570612).jpg, Holden WB panel van File:Holden WB Kingswood Sedan prototype (1979).jpg, 1979 Holden Kingswood (WB) sedan (prototype)

Powertrain

A 3.3-litre inline six cylinder engine was standard equipment and a 4.2-litre V8 was offered as an option. The 5.0-litre V8 option was not carried over from the HZ range, yet was available by special request which was popular with Kingswood model buyers.

Production

The WB series was discontinued in late 1984. Production of the Holden WB and related

Statesman WB Statesman is an automotive marque created in 1971 by the Australian General Motors subsidiary, Holden. Statesman vehicles were sold through Holden dealerships, and were initially based on the mainstream Holden HQ station wagon platform, thereby ...

models totalled 60,231 vehicles. No replacement for the Holden WB was offered initially,Terry Bebbington & Michel A Malik, 45 Years of Holden, 1994, page 140 bringing to an end a continuous 34-year run of light commercial models based on Holden passenger cars. This market segment would however be contested by Holden again from 1990 when the VN Commodore-based VG Utility was released.

References

{{Holden timeline WB Cars of Australia Cars introduced in 1980 Cars discontinued in 1984