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New Buick LaCrosse hints at next Holden Commodore


General Motors has unveiled a sleek new luxury sedan that will form the basis of the Holden Commodore of the future. Just don't expect a V8.

The biggest clue yet to the Holden Commodore of the future has been unveiled at the Los Angeles motor show.

The new Buick LaCrosse luxury sedan has the same underpinnings and body structure as the 2018 Holden Commodore, which will be imported once the Adelaide production line closes in late 2017.

While the bodywork will change slightly, the Buick is the clearest indication yet as to what the first imported Commodore will look like, including the long sleek body, hoop-shaped roof, large grille and tapered headlights.

Senior General Motors executives at the Los Angeles motor show confirmed to News Corp Australia that the Buick shares key components that will form the basis of the next Commodore.

The Buick LaCrosse is the first in a line of new luxury sedans to be based on a completely new underbody to used by General Motors globally.

The next vehicle in the General Motors world to adopt the new underbody is the Opel Insignia in Germany, which is the source for the next Holden Commodore.

Spy photos of the Opel Insignia during testing show that it has the same stretched dimensions and hoop-shaped roof as the Buick LaCrosse.

General Motors executives stopped short of declaring the Buick as the next Commodore, but did admit that the all-new architecture (car jargon for the underbody and the shape of the body structure) would form the basis of the next Commodore.

There will not be a V8 in the future Commodore line-up

Holden is yet to formally confirm that it will source the next Commodore from General Motors' European division Opel.

But it is regarded as an open secret in the car industry and Holden has had engineers based in Germany for at least two years.

The one thing that General Motors has confirmed, however, is that there will not be a V8 in the future Commodore line-up -- even though the V8 currently accounts for more than one-third of sales.

At the Frankfurt motor show in September the Asia-Pacific boss of General Motors, Stefan Jacoby, confirmed what has long been feared: "The world obviously is changing and the V8 period is coming to an end."

The next generation Holden Commodore, due in showrooms in 2018, will instead be available with a choice of four-cylinder and V6 power.