Spare a Thought for Vauxhall

In the giant garage sale that has come to define the bankruptcy of General Motors, many of the General's brands are being sold or shut down entirely. The newspapers here are carrying stories about the demise of Pontiac and the sale of Hummer and Saturn to a Chinese firm and Roger Penske, respectively. On the other side of the pond Opel is likely going to become the property of contract car builder Magna.

That brings us to Vauxhall. As it stands now, Vauxhall will be packaged with Opel in the Magna deal. Magna has said publicly that it intends to wind down the Vauxhall name and will replace it in the UK with the Opel badge.

For a number of years Opel and Vauxhall have been sharing the same designs and model names with Opel building left hand drive versions and Vauxhall concentrating on right drive and parts building for both UK and Germany. In the US many Opel designs are Saturn-branded. It is very possible that Opel's continental plants will be the sole source for Opels in the future.

Since most of us are into the sports car scene, it might be of interest to many of you to know that the first universally acknowledged sports car carried the Vauxhall griffin badge. The Vauxhall Prince Henry was built from 1911 to 1913 and was a powerful open top tourer that won several early motoring competitions including Brooklands speed trials and long distance rallying.

In 1925 Vauxhall became a GM subsidiary company, giving the General a weapon to fight Ford in the UK. For a time in the '50s and '60s, some Vauxhall models were imported to the US and sold at Pontiac dealers, again to respond to the "English" Fords on offer here.

As British car enthusiasts, we've seen this soap opera before in the decline, nationalization and subsequent breakup of the company that was British Leyland.