And yet those buyers made up more than half of VF / VF II sales, easy sales that didn't need convincing. Almost every ex- Holden buyer I've spoken to said the ZB was the last straw, doing that was a crap on the Commodore name and the reason they've bought their last Holden.
Where Ford transitioned its buyers, Holden drove them away. Fluff on all you like about ZB but it was the nail in the coffin.
Those 50% of VF/VFII buyers being V8s is an abberation on the results because the doors were closing. You know that and so do they. V8s were around 30% including utes. The loss of the ute would have been a much bigger hit in the sales pocket. Most of those who moved from utes did so because of tax breaks. If everything remained equal, I doubt a locally built Commodore would have achieved 1000+ even with an LT1 8/9speed combo. The ZB is still a good car, but I'll agree that it's not the Commodore everyone has dreamed about. None of that really matters, because large passenger cars (even medium) have tanked. Even the once "mighty" Camry which leads its segment, is selling 60% of RAV4 volumes. In fact the Camry sales are the lowest they've been in over ten years (except for last year...)!
The Commodore was in a nose dive since 2010, and the only thing that stemmed the decline was a slight bump when it was announced that local manufacturing was going to end. Starting from 2010: 45,956, 40,617, 30,532, 27,766, (closure announced end of 2013. Lo and behold a resurgence in 2014) 30,203, 27,770, 25,860, 23,767. Even if they somehow maintained a 10% decline year on year, right now, they'd still be behind Camry.
The last 2 results are obviously the ugliest, 9,040 and 5,915.
Even if they managed to keep those 50% of VF/VFII buyers buying a new V8 every year, it's 1000 units per month and simply not sustainable. Add Chevrolet SS sales? Another 5000.
You should ask those buyers what they bought instead of a V8 Commodore. I'll be interested in hearing their answer, because it's not a Mustang, or anything remotely similar, because nobody is buying passenger cars unless they are small cars.