The Holden Apollo, a rebadged Toyota Camry, was introduced as the Australian market replacement, with New Zealand instead offering the European-sourced Opel Vectra.

[1] The original Camira, the JB series, was introduced in August 1982 with a major trans-Tasman marketing campaign.

The Camira replaced the Sunbird and Torana, although an interim four-cylinder version of the Commodore bridged the two-year production gap.

A station wagon version was introduced in March 1983 and its bodywork was exported to Vauxhall in the United Kingdom for the Cavalier estate.

A five-door hatchback, based on the Opel Ascona/Vauxhall Cavalier "J-car" was proposed for the Camira, but never made it to the production stage due to Holden's financial losses at that time.

While superior to most other cars of the day in terms of ride and handling, the 1.6-litre Family II (16LF) engine, marketed as Camtech, was regarded as "underpowered" by much of the motoring media.

Early models of the Camira suffered from a litany of quality control problems, which included smoking engines, insufficient drainage holes in the doors, poor paint quality and lack of adequate fan cooling, resulting in overheating in JB Camiras fitted with air conditioning.

[citation needed] The second series JD Camira, released in November 1984 received a facelift, with a more aerodynamic front-end and the absence of a conventional front grille.

The result was that Holden dropped the multi-point injection for the 1.8-litre and reverted to single-point, akin to a carburettor, and altered the tuning of the engine to suit.

This decision was made by General Motors New Zealand as sales figures of the Camira JB were poor for this market, however the wagon version which was built and sold in Australia was retained and assembled locally.

[7] By this time, many of the Camira's early quality problems had been overcome, and Holden now fitted the multi-point fuel-injected 2.0-litre engine to replace the 1.8-litre unit.

The Vacationer, SLi 2000 and the Formula were sold in limited numbers and are subsequently rare today, as were cars built with power windows, central locking and automatic boot lid releases.All Camira models suffered from some common problems, which is one of the reasons why the car did not garner significant sales figures.