Holden's motorsport manager, Simon McNamara, told Speedcafe.com they would seriously look at the new class in the future.
“If they were looking at making some changes to some rules and specifications, there may be an application from us for Cruze in Australia,” McNamara said.
“In the immediate future – this year and next year – there’ll be nothing, but we’re certainly open to ideas. As I said, we’ll keep talking about and see where it goes.
“We’d need to do a business case for it, including from a performance point of view. We’ve got enough parties that can assist us along the way. It would be matter of linking with the right team.
“It’s very early days, preliminary conversations were fine, so we’ll see where it comes out.
“But our stance is that unless we have a vehicle that is competitive, we wouldn’t enter just to make up the numbers.”
Ford's Chris Styring showed similar interest.
"Marketing opportunities (for the new Territory) will be investigated, for sure. But motorsport is always under the microscope, whether its V8 Supercars or Formula Ford or rallying, so with a limited budget it makes things difficult," Styring told Motorsport News.
"A compact SUV motorsport competition would resonate with more new cars buyers than V8 Supercars, for the first time in our history."
New ARC boss, Scott Pedder, has already spoken to nearly a dozen manufacturers about the new SUV category, including Subaru, Mazda, Nissan, Peugeot, MINI, Saab, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai.
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