Vauxhall
Vauxhall started building motor vehicles in the early 20th Century at Vauxhall iron works in London. The company grew sufficiently that in 1905 they moved to Luton. Vauxhall built many types and models of cars but probably best known is their sporting Pomeroy designed 30/98, which was first introduced in 1913. Vauxhall were well known in all forms of competitions, sprints, hill climb, record breaking, and racing in Grand Prix, at Brooklands and elsewhere, even to building special cars for some of these events. But when Vauxhall got taken over by General Motors in 1925 all of that came to a stop, and the company was turned around to the "small car" end of the market. Models like the Cadet from the early 1930's and later Light 6, alongside medium sized models. The 10 and 12hp models were well suited to the post war economy, replaced shortly after with the Wyvern and Velox (which evolved into the Cresta). For 1957 came the Victor, with much restyling done as the years passed. For 1963 there was a serious push at the mass market with the Vauxhall Viva, which subsequently evolved with bigger engines and improved specifications until by 1974 the small engined Viva kept its name, and the larger models got the name Magnum (as did the Firenza Coupe), while later a new low drag 120mph Firenza was introduced. All these General Motors Vauxhall products mirrored what was going on at Opel in Germany. 1975 was a busy year with a Vauxhall Cavailier (an Opel Ascona with a Manta front end and Viva engine) and built in Belgium before production came to the UK. A new 1.25 litre Chevette was shown at Geneva, the Viva range, Firenza, Victor, VX 4/90 and Ventora . . . .
