Holden Special Vehicles, fondly abbreviated as HSV, is the officially designated premium performance vehicle division of the Australian motor automobile company and manufacturer, Holden. The company was established in 1987 and is based in Clayton, Victoria. The HSV company modifies Holden products such as the Commodore, Caprice and the Ute providing them a unique body-work and alloy wheels, improving the cars' interiors and as well as their all-round performance through HSV's upgraded engines, brakes, transmissions and suspension.

The first car produced by HSV was the Holden VL Commodore SS Group A SV in 1988 (based on the VL Commodore and not to be confused with the HDT's similarly named Holden VL Commodore SS Group A). It had a distinctive body kit with a large rear wing (earning it the nicknames "The Batmobile" and the "Plastic Pig") and was powered by a modified version of the Holden 5.0 litre V8, which had dual throttle body electronic fuel injection and was rated at 180 kW in road car form. It was built as a touring car homologation package for Group A racing and in racing form, managed to win the 1990 Bathurst 1000 race in the hands of Allan Grice and Win Percy for HSV's racing arm, the Holden Racing Team.

The Holden VL Commodore SS Group A SV was the first car produced by Holden Special Vehicles. Developed under contract to the Holden company, it was released in March 1988. Modifications were made to the standard Holden 5.0 litre V8 to produce 180 kW (245 PS; 241 hp) @ 5200 rpm and 380 Nm @ 4000 rpm.

A number of models based on the VN Holden Commodore were developed by HSV, the most popular of these being the Commodore SS Group A SV built for Holden. It featured an extensively modified version of Holden's 5.0 litre V8 to produce 215 kW @ 5200 rpm and 411 N·m @ 4000 rpm coupled to a six-speed ZF S6-40 manual transmission as used in the Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1. Upgrades were also made to the suspension, tires and brakes. 500 cars was the original production target for homologation reasons, but only 302 were ultimately produced in non-sequential order meaning build number 450 may exist while build number 100 may not.

The Holden VP Commodore was the seventh model of the Holden Commodore. The car was released in September 1991 and featured mainly cosmetic and feature changes to the outgoing VN. The same 3.8 litre V6 and 5.0 litre V8 engines from the VN Commodore were carried over, but the V6 engine received various revisions that improved its refinement and noise characteristics as well as boosting power by two kilowatts. Accompanying the engine changes the 2.0 litre straight-4 was discontinued. ABS brakes were also introduced in the VP range as an option on Calais and SS models for Series I, and on most models with IRS for Series II versions. Additional security features were introduced across the range, which included an ignition-disabling device and a driver's door deadlock.