Lamenting Luton’s 120 years of Vauxhall production | Axon’s Automotive Anorak

Despite Luton being Vauxhall’s naturalised home, the motor manufacturer was named after its original South London base in the Vauxhall area, where it built marine engines and made its first motor car in 1903 out of the remains of the struggling 1894-established Vauxhall Iron Works Company.

Having sold an impressive 50 motor cars in its first year, Vauxhall soon needed to expand. Space in London was too crowded and at a premium, so a suitable site 34 miles away in Luton was chosen, with plenty of skilled wood workers available locally from the hat making trade. 

The first Luton-made Vauxhall car was the 9HP, a development of the London-built 7HP three-cylinder model. Vauxhall followed this with its first four-cylinder, four-seater model in 1906; the 3.4-litre 18HP, which was also the first Vauxhall model to introduce scooped-out bonnet corners, a famous marque signature for over 60 years.

Upon relocating to Luton, an exceptionally gifted young automotive engineer, Laurence Pomeroy, joined Vauxhall and went on to have a long-term influence not only on the company, but the British motor industry as a whole. In 1909, Pomeroy developed and drove the first British car to achieve 100mph, recording 100.8mph at Brooklands in a special narrow bodied Vauxhall KN competition A-Type 20HP.

This achievement did wonders for Vauxhall’s reputation, enhanced by victories taken in the 1909 Scottish and Irish Trails and the 1911 Russian Trail from St. Petersburg to Sevastopol.

This success led to the production of Europe’s first real sportscar: the celebrated 1910-14 Vauxhall C10 Prince Henry, named in honour of the handsome sporting special built for the 1910 Russian Trial sponsored by Prince Heinrich (Henry) of Prussia. Widely considered to be one of the world’s most outstanding motor cars of its day, the Prince Henry Vauxhalls are among the most sought-after pre-WWI cars today, as well as being the most desirable Vauxhall among serious collectors.         

Directly following the acclaimed Prince Henry, the sporting 1913 Vauxhall 30/98 was Pomeroy’s great masterpiece, becoming a benchmark for the marque and other vintage sports car to come. A seriously capable and aspirational sports car, the 30/98 was introduced) just before the outbreak of WWI and returned after the Armistice in 1919 as the acclaimed E-type, benefitting from Vauxhall’s wartime experience in building and supplying the British military with around 2,000 D-type staff cars. 

Already regarded as the finest all-round sporting car it was possible to own in the early 1920s, in 1923, the 30/98 was improved with a new overhead valve engine. Good for a guaranteed 100mph in lightweight two-seater form, it was the ultimate fast tourer of its day.

Despite strong demand, however, the 30/98 competed in a limited and expensive niche of wealthy sports-minded motoring gentlemen, which didn’t make for a good long-term profitable business proposition.

Looking to expand its operations into Europe, and after being rebuffed by Austin, GM took over Vauxhall in 1925, thus securing the company’s future. Although it appreciated Vauxhall’s enviable reputation as a builder of fine, expensive cars for the wealthy motoring elite, GM’s motivation in acquiring Vauxhall lay more in achieving greater sale volumes to tackle its US rival Ford, as well as larger British companies such as Austin, Morris, and Hillman.

Although GM initially continued low-scale production of Vauxhall’s elite sporting models, in 1930 it presented the more mainstream and affordable Vauxhall Cadet at the Olympia Motor Show as the first of a new era. Throughout the 1930s, no real Vauxhall innovations or notable products were introduced, beyond the 1937 H-type Ten-Four – Britain’s first unitary construction car, and the Luton-made, separate Bedford commercial vehicle marque introduced in 1931 as Vauxhall’s truck sibling.

With the outbreak of WWII, Vauxhall halted all passenger car production in 1940 to design, develop and build the Churchill Tank. Although under-gunned with a weak 6-pounder, it was Churchills that captured the formidable German Tiger tanks in North Africa in 1943. Between 1940-44, around 7,500 Churchill tanks were made by Vauxhall in Luton, along with 750,000 steel helmets, plus development work on Halifax, Mosquito and Lancaster bomber aircraft. 

Despite the Luton Vauxhall plant being a bombing target for the Luftwaffe, Vauxhall restarted vehicle production in 1946 by reintroducing a range of bland pre-war saloons. The GM influence showed through with a series of odd and vulgar models such as the unremittingly forgettable 1948 Velox/Wyvern L, gaudy 1951 E-type Velox/Cresta, and excessive whale-like Cresta/Velox PA.

Vauxhall’s post-war lack of innovation reputation continued for good reason, although the Victor 101 FC of 1964 was the first British car to feature curved side glass and the 1966 Viva HB and ’67 Victor HD pioneered the brief ‘Coke bottle’ styling fad.

By the 1970s, the most noteworthy Vauxhalls were the lively but short-lived 1973 Firenza HP ‘Droopsnoot’ coupé, plus the rally bred 1977 Chevette HS2300 homologation special, which was far cooler than contemporary performance rear-wheel-drive Ford Escorts in my view.

Vauxhall’s fortunes as a serious mass-market volume player really took off in the 1980s, with the introduction of the second-generation Cavalier. Stylish and front-wheel-drive, it made the contemporary rival rear-drive Ford Sierra seem quirky and outdated. The svelte Calibra coupé helped to seal Vauxhall’s refreshed new image, as did the fierce Lotus Carlton amongst others.

The final Luton-built Vauxhall passenger car (out of a total of 7.4 million) was a Vectra made in 2002, with the last Frontera SUV 4x4 made in the separate IBC Luton plant in 2004. Today’s series of Stellantis RHD light commercial vehicles are still produced in this IBC factory unit, including the Vauxhall Vivaro.

Production of all of these will be transferred up to the Ellesmere Port in 2025, thus ending 120 years of vehicle production in Luton. It will be a very sad day in the town’s long history.    

Main image courtesy of Getty Images.