√Neighbours has been cancelled after 37 years. Let’s pour one out for Toadie’s VC Commodore Wagon…

For better or worse the long-running soap opera will draw to a close in June this year. Let’s take the time to remember Erinsborough’s favourite son, and his ill-fated Holden Commodore Wagon

To clarify right away, I’m not much of a Neighbours fan, but given the show has been part of Australian TV screens for almost four decades, it’s fair to say I caught the occasional storyline and character arc.

Jarrod ‘Toadfish’ Rebecchi, was Ramsey Street’s everyman. Maturing from 1995’s loveable larrikin to 2022’s loveable lawyer, Toadie has become something of an Australian small-screen icon. A character for whom no obstacle was too great to overcome, even with a mullet and shabby goatee.

I’m sure there were plenty of crucial and dramatic moments for Toadfish fans, however for us, Toadie’s most memorable on-screen adventure involved yet another Australian icon…

Also much loved and a little rough, the 1981 VC Holden Commodore only served in the Lion’s catalogue for one model year, before being replaced by the similar (but revised) VH Commodore.

The VC is easily recognisable by its cross-hatch ‘egg crate’ grille and was offered with engines ranging from a 58kW 1.9-litre four-cylinder to a 126kW 5.0-litre V8. It was popular too, as in 18-months of life (March 1980 to October 1981) Holden built 121,870 VC Commos.

Toadie’s car was a 1981 Commodore L station wagon, which when new, could be yours from just $8020.

Fitted with that best-avoided ‘Starfire’ four-pot as the entry point, but also available a 76kW 2.8-litre six-cylinder and manual transmission between it and the V8, the Commodore L wagon offered a maximum load area length of 1830mm (an even 6-foot), AM radio and a heated rear window. There were 18 colours to choose from, and well, Toadie chose two…

Ignoring any back story or soap-opera rationale, the iconic scene from 2003 shows Jarrod and his new wife Dee Bliss canoodling on the front seat of the VC, fresh from their nuptials, and heading off on a honeymoon.

For some reason the route to the airport takes in a narrow cliff-top road and, distracted by a newlywed smooch, Toadie misses a turn, crashes through a sign, and leaps over a cliff into the icy waters of Erinsborough Ocean, or Bay – or whatever location magic best suited the writer’s imaginations.

The mighty Commodore then sinks below the waves, the fate of its occupants unknown… until the next season. No cliffhanger here, straight off and into the water for this season-ending nail-biter.

Spoiler alert: Toadie swims to shore, Dee does not.

The car is recovered, with one of televisions’ greatest composition framing shots, but there is no one in the passenger seat. Dee has vanished, heartbreak ensues, until of course she returns to the series in 2017, but since she didn’t roll up in the VC Commodore of legend, that storyline is of no interest to us.

Watch it here:

Analysing the demise of the VC again, nearly a decade on, we have noticed something new.

Our keen eyes can see that two cars have been used. The ‘hero’ car is Palais White with silver wheels whereas the ‘jump’ car is ‘Torquay Sand’ with grubby wheels. Shame on you for not thinking we’d notice.

The car recovered from the water is clearly the tan one, and looking more carefully at the stunt itself, we can see that trim and driveline elements have been removed, no doubt to ensure a more level entry (rather than a nose dive) into the deep blue sea, while keeping surrounding sea life free from contaminants.

Given nearly ten years have passed, we can assume both cars have long since been retired to the great carpark in the sky, and with the show cancelled we’ll never have the storyline where Toadie, late night scrolling through Erinsborough Classifieds, finds an overpriced VC wagon (half white, half cream) to work on as a post-lockdown project, that, with the secret child that he didn’t know existed until a chance meeting on her sixteenth birthday, and his now recovered cousin who suffered memory-loss when the beach diner exploded and he was saving the life of the runaway teenager who turned out to be his sister, can work on together as a way of remembering his lost wife who wasn’t actually dead but is also an identical twin to the woman he sat next to on a train, can then drive the car to the spot above the ocean and forgive all their wrongdoings while Dr Karl plays guitar.

Shame really. I would have watched that.