The story
Independent (1857–1925)
Scottish marine engineer Alexander Wilson founded the company at 90–92 Wandsworth Road, Vauxhall, London (now the site of Nine Elms tube station), in 1857. It was founded as Alex Wilson and Company, and from 1857, the company built pumps and marine engines. In 1903 the company built its first car, a five-horsepower single-cylinder model steered using a tiller, with two forward gears and no reverse gear. About 70 were made in the first year, before the car was improved with wheel steering and a reverse gear in 1904. A single survivor could still be seen at the London Science Museum in 1968. A 1903 model was entered in the London-to-Brighton car run in 2018.
To expand, the company moved the majority of its production to Luton in 1905. The company continued to trade under the name Vauxhall Iron Works until 1907, when the modern name 'Vauxhall Motors' was adopted. The company was characterised by its sporting models, but after World War I, the company's designs were more austere.
Much of Vauxhall's success during the early years of Vauxhall Motors was attributable to Laurence Pomeroy. He joined Vauxhall in 1906 at the age of 22, as an assistant draughtsman. In the winter of 1907/8, the chief designer F. W. Hodges took a long holiday, and in his absence, the managing director Percy Kidner asked Pomeroy to design an engine for cars to be entered in the 1908 RAC and Scottish Reliability Trial, held in June that year. The cars were so successful that Pomeroy took over from Hodges.
Pomeroy's first design, the Y-Type Y1, had outstanding success at the 1908 RAC and Scottish 2000 Mile Reliability Trials—showing excellent hill-climbing ability with an aggregate of 37 seconds less time in the hill climbs than any other car in its class. With unparalleled speeds around the Brooklands circuit, the Vauxhall was so far ahead of all other cars of any class that the driver could relax, accomplishing the 200 miles (320 km) at an average speed of 46 mph (74 km/h), when the car was capable of 55 mph (89 km/h). The Y-Type went on to win class E of the trial.
The Y-Type was so successful that it was decided to put the car into production as the A09 car. This spawned the Vauxhall A-Type. Four distinct types of this were produced between 27 October 1908 and when mass production halted in 1914. One last A-Type was put together in 1920. Capable of up to 100 mph (160 km/h), the A-Type Vauxhall was one of the most acclaimed three-litre cars of its day.
Two cars were entered in the 1910 Prince Henry Trials, and although not outright winners, performed well, and replicas were made for sale officially as the C-type, but now known as the Prince Henry. During the First World War, Vauxhall made large numbers of the D-type, a Prince Henry chassis with derated engine, for use as staff cars for the British forces.
After the 1918 armistice, the D-type remained in production, along with the sporting E-type. Pomeroy left in 1919, moving to the United States, and was replaced by C.E. King. Although Vauxhall made good cars, expensive pedigree cars of the kind that had served the company well in the prosperous prewar years were no longer in demand; the company struggled to make a consistent profit and Vauxhall looked for a major strategic partner.
1925–1939
On 16 November 1925, Vauxhall was acquired by General Motors for US$2.5 million. At the time, the purchase was not popular among senior U.S. GM executives. Vauxhall was only making seventeen cars per week and was in a financial mess. The company's image and target market were gently but firmly changed over the next five and more years, marked particularly by the introduction in late 1930 of the low-cost two-litre Vauxhall Cadet and the next year the first Bedford truck, which was Chevrolet based. Vauxhall's chief engineer since 1920, Charles Evelyn King, retired as engineering director in 1950. The company's future chief engineer, Harold Drew, left Luton for a spell, working as a draughtsman with GM's Lansing-based Oldsmobile division. As the first significant post-acquisition passenger car, the Cadet, initially retailing at £280, is generally regarded as demonstrating Vauxhall's newly acquired interest and expertise in controlling production costs, but it was also the first British car to feature a synchromesh gearbox.
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General Motors continued to reposition Vauxhall towards the middle of the British car market. They aimed to produce higher volumes of more conventional cars that, using GM's large engineering, design and production resources, would offer modern technology and high levels of equipment at a reasonable price, with competitors being the likes of Wolseley and Humber. The Cadet had been the first step in this process, which gathered pace in June 1933 with the launch of the AS-type Light Six. With an all-steel body and a refined and modern overhead valve inline-six engine, the Light Six was produced in 12- and 14-'tax horsepower' variants. Modernisation and expansion of the Luton factory meant that the Light Six was sold for £195 for the standard four-door saloon, which was significantly less than many of its older rivals with four-cylinder engines and fewer interior appointments, and Vauxhall made the unusual decision to offer both 12 and 14 models for the same price. Two-door saloon, coupe, tourer and cabriolet bodies were also available for extra cost, plus a range of other body designs from coachbuilders. The Light Six was an immediate sale success, surpassing all previous Vauxhall products by a large margin with 26,000 examples being sold in just over 12 months and with the Luton factory moving onto 24-hour shift work to meet demand. Vauxhall had suddenly become a significant player in the British car market.
After 15 months on sale the AS-type Light Six was replaced by the D-type Light Six. This was fundamentally the same as the outgoing model with minor styling and interior updates, but with one major engineering change—namely the addition of Dubonnet suspension to the front, making the new Light Six the first mass-production British saloon car with independent front suspension. The Dubonnet system was a GM patent, also used on Chevrolet and Pontiac models in the US and on Opel cars in Europe. The D-type Light Six was priced at between £205 and £245 for the standard saloon depending on the exact specification, which was still a lower-than-average price for a car of the new Light Six's size, power, equipment and technical specification and this was another successful model for Vauxhall.
The overall strategy for Vauxhall continued to be to make smaller models with the latest engineering developments. Vauxhall and GM management planned a completely new three-model car range which would use cutting-edge unibody construction instead of the traditional body-on-frame design. The first mass-production unibody car, the Citroën Traction Avant began production in 1934, the same year that design work on the new Vauxhall range began. As well as designing an entirely new car body, this change required major expansion, renewal and investment in the Luton factory as well as a significant expansion of Vauxhall's engineering and design staff. The first of the new models was released in September 1937. This was the H-type 10-4 (the model number referring to its 10 tax-horsepower, four-cylinder engine). This was the first truly small Vauxhall in many years. As well as its advanced unibody structure—a first for a British saloon car—the 10-4 also featured an overhead valve engine, fully hydraulic brakes and Dubonnet front suspension. Other features included a full-synchromesh gearbox, mechanical windscreen wipers and a 'six-stage' carburetor. Priced at £168-182, the 10-4 was only slightly more expensive than old-fashioned equivalents from Austin and Morris and cost around £30 more than the cheapest 10-horsepower class car on sale, the Ford 7W. The model was promoted as "The £1 Million Motor Car", reflecting the supposed investment in its design and production and was noted for its excellent fuel economy of over 40mpg when touring due to its efficient modern engine and lightweight body. The 10-4 was considered to be the finest small car in the world at the time of its launch and initial demand greatly exceeded production capacity. Just six months after the 10-4's launch, the 10,000th example left Luton—a production record for the Vauxhall at the time. The H-type 10-4 was only the first and smallest in the proposed trio of similarly advanced unibody cars. The I-type 12-4 (essentially the same as the 10-4 but with a longer wheelbase and an enlarged engine) was introduced in September 1938 and the J-type 14-6, replacing the old Light Six, was introduced the following month but sales did not begin until early 1939. This advanced three-model range was very well received by critics and buyers and placed Vauxhall in the vanguard of automotive engineering for the mass market in Britain. However, the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 greatly restricted the sales of all new cars just as the new Vauxhall range was entering the market and production was reaching full flow. Car production was ceased entirely in May 1940, by which time over 50,000 10-4s, 10,000 12-4s and 15,000 14-6s had been built.
1940s
During the Second World War, car production at Luton was suspended to allow Vauxhall to work on the new Churchill tank. Despite a bombing raid in August 1940, in which 39 employees were killed, it was taken from specification to production in less than a year, and assembled there (as well as at other sites). More than 5,600 Churchill tanks were built. Luton also produced around 250,000 lorries for the war effort, alongside the new Bedford Dunstable plant, which was opened in 1942, with Bedford designs being common in British use. As a morale booster for the company employees, on 23, 24 and 25 February 1944, Adelaide Hall appeared in concert at the factory in Luton, where she entertained the employees during their lunch break. In all, she performed in front of more than 10,000 workers; this was the first time that Vauxhall had contracted a star to perform at their factory for three consecutive days.
Vauxhall was one of the first English car makers to switch from wartime to civilian production, mostly due to the ease with which Bedford trucks in production for military use could be redirected to the civilian market. The first post-war civilian trucks were made a few days before VJ Day in August 1945, with Vauxhall car production resuming in September. These initial models were essentially unchanged from the three-model range (H-, I-, and J-type unibody designs) that had been launched just before the outbreak of war in 1939. However, they were now renamed simply as the Vauxhall Ten, Twelve and Fourteen, respectively, were each available in a single body and specification (four-door saloons to what had been the Deluxe trim level) to ease production and had minor internal and external trim differences to account for shortages or extra costs of various materials.
Government regulations of the time meant that 75% of production had to be sent for export, so very few of these revived models reached buyers in the United Kingdom. Further rationalisation occurred in 1946 when the Twelve ceased to be a distinct model and now shared the body of the Ten but with the larger-capacity engine. These models were superseded by 'new' cars in 1948. GM management had dictated that Luton should only utilise a single body design in order to maximise productivity and reduce supply costs. The British government had also revoked the RAC taxable horsepower system and replaced it with a flat charge per vehicle regardless of engine size. This meant that there was no longer an imperative to offer similar models with different engine capacities to fit in the different bands of the old tax system. Therefore, the new 1948 L-Type Vauxhalls consisted of just a pair of models, both using the body structure, floorpan and many running gear parts of the H-type/Ten model. However, Vauxhall's director of styling, David Jones, managed to fit brand new exterior panels to the front, rear and rear-quarters of the old body centre-section to give the L-type a modern look which shared its basic shape and features with GM's Chevrolet Fleetline of the same year, albeit at a much smaller scale.
The new models were the Wyvern (using the four-cylinder engine previously used in the Twelve) and the Velox using a new wide-bore development of the six-cylinder engine from the Fourteen. Otherwise, the L-Types reused the three-speed transmission (albeit with a switch to a column gear change, hydraulic brakes and Dubonnet suspension of the pre-war models essentially unchanged. Those predecessors had been advanced for their time so the Wyvern and Velox were still competitive despite being considered small and cramped alongside the likes of the Morris Minor or the A40 Devon of Austin. The Velox especially, with its smooth and powerful engine in a relatively small car, offered strong performance and good reliability to compete against the V8-powered Ford Pilot.
1950s
The L-Types were replaced by a truly new model, the E-Types, in 1951 with the new cars having been in development since 1948. GM was still restricting Vauxhall to a one-body policy and the range still consisted of two models differentiated mostly by their engines—the four-cylinder EIX Wyvern and the six-cylinder EIP Velox. While they were designed at Luton they drew a lot of influence from styling developments made in Detroit, especially the revised 1951-model-year Chevrolets. The E-Types continued the use of unibody construction, but of a brand new and much larger design with full-width 'pontoon' styling. They offered significantly more cabin and luggage space and a great deal of effort was put into both the styling of the interior and the reduction of vibration and noise. The complicated Dubonnet suspension system was replaced by more conventional design using coil springs and twin wishbones with telescopic dampers, while the rear axle retained leaf springs but also with the addition of telescopic dampers. The transmission and steering remained little-changed from the existing design.
Vauxhall planned and developed a new range of short-stroke overhead-valve engines for the E-Types but financial and production constraints meant that the first new Wyverns and Veloxes were launched with the same engines as the outgoing L-Type. In the bigger, heavier E-Type models these gave very poor performance, especially the Wyvern with an engine all-but unchanged since 1937. The new engines, both slightly larger than the existing design, were fitted to both models during 1952 and brought performance up to a competitive level. In terms of price and production the E-Type Vauxhalls were now full contenders in the mid-size car market in Britain, alongside the likes of the Ford Consul/Zephyr and especially the increasingly old-fashioned Hillman Minx. By 1953, Vauxhall was building 110,000 E-Type models at Luton per year, with around half of production going to export—mostly to the Commonwealth markets which still maintained preferential tariffs for British-made products.
For 1955, the E-Type Vauxhalls received a facelift with new frontal and interior styling and minor mechanical refinements. Most importantly, Vauxhall returned to offering three car models (albeit all still sharing a single body design) with the addition of the Cresta, which was a more luxuriously styled and appointed version of the Velox. Following GM practice from America, from this point Vauxhall began offering annual minor updates, improvements and styling changes to its cars to both keep up with competitors and to tempt existing owners to replace their car.
Since the restarting of car production in 1945 the limiting factor for Vauxhall sales had been production, sometimes leading to lengthy waiting lists for customers. While the Luton factory had been expanded and modernised in the early 1950s, the main restriction was the lack of capacity for building the unitary bodyshells. Expansion of the body shop would require large investment that GM was reluctant to release and this was the main reason for Vauxhall relying on a single body design across three distinct models.
In 1954, GM management sanctioned a switch to a two-body line-up at Vauxhall with concurrent investment to expand both the body shop and production lines at Luton. The new model would replace the four-cylinder Wyvern with a smaller car using the same engine, bringing Vauxhall into line with the established norm for cars in the 1.5-litre class—the E-Type Wyvern was a significantly larger car than its direct competitors. The new car would be launched for 1957 alongside new Velox/Cresta models which could, correspondingly, be slightly enlarged since their body no longer had to be shared with a model in the class below.
The small model, named the F-Type Victor was announced first in February 1957. Although its engineering followed familiar Vauxhall lines—a unitary structure, independent front suspension with coil springs, a leaf-sprung live rear axle and a 1.5-litre four-cylinder overhead valve engine with a three-speed manual transmission with column-mounted change—it was, by necessity, virtually all brand new. The drivetrain was largely lifted from the outgoing E-Type Wyvern, but the engine received a higher compression ratio and updated carburation to account for the new widespread availability of high-octane fuel and so made more power. Stylistically the Victor followed the familiar Vauxhall trend of following American styling trends, although the Victor took this to a new level by closely resembling the famous 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air, complete with tailfins, prominent 'flutes' on the bonnet (a modern evocation of a familiar Vauxhall styling cue dating back to the 1920s), wrap-around front and rear screens, large chromed bumpers and an exhaust tailpipe integrated into one of the rear overriders. A year after launch the Victor would also provide the basis for Vauxhall's first factory-built estate car.
The new P-Type Velox/Cresta models were announced in October 1957. Like the Victor these essentially featured updated versions of the drivetrain (and running gear) from the E-Type models in a new, larger and much more flamboyantly styled body. American styling cues were again much in evidence, this time being heavily influenced by a 1954 Cadillac concept car called the Park Avenue.
Both the new Vauxhall models continued the success of their predecessors. The Victor achieved new sales records for Vauxhall and in the late 1950s was Britain's most exported car, being sold in most right-hand drive car markets such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Thailand and Singapore. The model was also sold in left-hand drive form by General Motors in Canada (under the specially created Envoy name and under the original Vauxhall Victor name through Pontiac dealerships in the USA. Nearly 400,000 F-Type Victors were built at Luton between the start of 1957 and the end of production in mid-1961. With the Victor taking the place of many previous Wyvern sales, the P-Type models did not sell in the same quantities as the entire E-Type range had, but over 180,000 were built between October 1957 and July 1962 with over 100,000 of those cars being exported.
From Wikipedia’s article on Vauxhall Motors, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4