About

HSV Explorer is an unofficial fan project by Paul Vella, a member of HSV Club Victoria whose family has a connection with General Motors-Holden. It has no affiliation with GM, Holden, HSV or HDT.

The two brands

HDT Special Vehicles built Holden-approved high-performance road cars under Peter Brock's direction from 1980, based on the VC, VH, VK and VL Commodore and the WB Statesman. Holden ended the relationship in 1987 over the 'Energy Polarizer' controversy, and HDT kept building cars independently for a short time.

Holden Special Vehicles was set up in 1987 as a joint venture between Holden and Tom Walkinshaw Racing. Its first car was the 1988 VL Commodore SS Group A SV. HSV built Commodore-based cars until 2017 and the Grange until 2016, and closed in 2020 when GM replaced it with GM Specialty Vehicles.

How the catalogue is built

Specs and histories are summarised from the sources linked on each page (mostly Wikipedia). Where a figure couldn't be sourced it is shown as 'unknown' rather than guessed. Corrections are welcome.

Photos come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences (CC BY, CC BY-SA or public domain), with the author, licence and source credited on each car's page. No official logos or press photos are used.