You Need To Buy This Vauxhall VXR8 Maloo Before We Do

We don’t need to tell you that Vauxhall, by and large, doesn’t make interesting cars. Truthfully, it never really has – bar the VX220, providing the base for the Lotus Carlton and importing various Holdens before putting the griffin badge on them.

It’s that lattermost arrangement that has reminded us today that, sometimes, Vauxhall badges have actually appeared on the coolest cars to make it to the UK. Welcome, then, to a horrible financial decision we’re contemplating.

There’s a Vauxhall VXR8 Maloo up for auction through Collecting Cars right now, and we’d be lying if we hadn’t taken a brief interlude between finding it and researching for this story to check out horrendously unfavourable deals on a loan to finance it.

Yes, in case you forgot, you could buy a V8 ute on our shores for a brief period of time. In effect, the VXR8 Maloo was a Holden Special Vehicles Maloo RS8 wearing some new paraphernalia.

Under the bonnet sits a 6.2-litre supercharged GM LSA V8, producing 536bhp and 495lb ft of torque – more or less a detuned version of the one you’d find in the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 at the time.

All of that is sent exclusively to the rear wheels, and better still, through a six-speed manual gearbox.

Despite its agricultural Aussie nature, there are some proper chassis bits to help it do things like turn corners and not just be a rolling burnout machine. A proper limited-slip differential is fitted, an anti-roll bar at the front and multi-link suspension on the rear. Stopping power comes courtesy of four-piston AP Racing brakes.

This 2018 example of the ute has covered just 18,000 miles across two owners. Oh, and it’s painted luminous green – or ‘Spitfire’, as a commendable marketing decision has branded it. There’s also an aftermarket exhaust on this one, in case it wasn’t already loud enough…

As of writing, there are six days to go on the auction, and bidding sits at £15,750. We’d expect that to rise pretty substantially, and fear for our credit scores as a result.