You probably know Vauxhall and their German cousin Opel as the makers of reasonably prices cars that
maybe aren’t that exciting. But in the 60s and 70s Vauxhall produced several amazing sports
car and supercar concepts that rivalled the best Lamborghini had to offer. And Vauxhall
didn’t just make concepts, there was the VX220 – a car that was a lot of fun with
great handling. But why didn’t these 60s cars or the last concept ever make it to production?
This is the Vauxhall Sports Car story.
[music]
Before Vauxhall was a mass car maker, heck,
before they were owned by General Motors they were the purveyors of high class automobiles,
to Russian royalty no less, and the fact it was Russian royalty shows you just how long
ago that was. Vauxhall started building cars in 1903 during the car boom where
every man and his dog was having a go at car production. It was popular to advertise your
wares by taking them racing and Vauxhall cars did just that. But they also competed in reliability
trials like the Scottish 2000 mile event in 1908. The 1911 Vauxhall Prince Henry is thought of by
some as the first sports car in that the car depended less on a powerful engine, and more
on the chassis and design of the overall vehicle. Now, when I say “powerful engine”, it was a 3.0L
delivering only 60hp (45 kW) in race mode which was powerful for the day but would be outclassed
by the entry level 2024 Vauxhall Corsa. The car was named after Prince Henry of Prussia and the
1910 motor trials named in his honour. A couple of the cars were sold to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
Understandably Britain was less focused on motor racing and more on World War 1 between 1914 and
1918, but after the madness had ended Vauxhall returned to making racing cars. The 30-98,
based on the Prince Henry chassis, could get to 100mph (161 km/h) and was raced in the 1920s.
General Motors purchased Vauxhall in 1925. The American car giant was much more interested in
selling family cars than exotic sports cars to the landed gentry, but existing cars like the 20-60
continued to be sold with exotic tuning. There was also the special “R-Type” with a 2.8L engine.
But in the 1930s Vauxhall steadily switched to the maker of mass market cars like the 10-4.
Fast forward to the 1960s. Car sales in the UK are booming. Ford and Vauxhall were fighting for
sales against British competition like Triumph and Austin/Morris. Vauxhall were making a name
for themselves, but for all the wrong reasons. Their conservative cars and Bedford vans meant
they were thought of as a little boring. Not just that, they made boring cars that were
rust buckets. What Vauxhall needed to do, other than making sure their cars could stand up to the
British rain, was to make a big splash to get customers interested in their cars once again.
Jaguar were known for fast, sporty cars, and GM themselves had seen the advantage of a “halo
car” in the US with the Corvette that brought in customers to see the rest of their range.
How about returning to making Vauxhall sports cars? The first model was a high performance
version of the VX 4/90 in 1961. That was a good start, but clearly Vauxhall needed to do more.
Why not take the platform for the new Vauxhall Viva and turn it into a 2 door roadster like
the recently updated Austin Healey Sprite and MG Midget and the new Triumph Spitfire? A clay
mock-up was produced in 1963 which was transformed into something that looked ready to drive,
and something a lot more exciting than the conservative Viva. This wasn’t stodgy old
Vauxhall. The car – tentatively named the Piper – looked like it had been styled in Italy,
with wired wheels like that on the Jaguar E-Type, twin exhausts and a simple but elegant dashboard.
A running prototype was approved which had a modified, but still beautiful design.
The car wasn’t necessarily intended for production. It’s more likely it was a
“wow” project to show to GM’s head of design Bill Mitchell who was visiting and known for
being a sports can fan. He apparently approved of the mock-up, and Vauxhall’s management,
who got to drive it, were also keen. There was even a rendering of a hardtop,
but the car never made it to production. Buoyed by management’s reaction to the Piper,
Vauxhall’s styling department continued to pursue sports car designs. Work started the
following year on a 2+2 GT concept using parts from the Piper Roadster to save costs.
Quite why Vauxhall’s styling department was working on this is a bit of a mystery. It’s not like
they didn’t have plenty of work to do updating production cars, but this may have been a bit
of a vanity project by the head of styling, and to show what the team was capable of.
The result was something that looked like it could have been designed in the 1970s, not in 1964 – it
was a well-balanced shape that just by the look of it, you knew would be fun to drive, even though
the clay mock-up had never turned a wheel. It showed the team had the capability to make some
interesting passenger cars given the chance. The styling team took the extraordinary
decision to shell out the cash to turn it into a purple fibreglass model with glass windows.
Extraordinary because beyond this nothing else was done. Maybe management saw it,
we’ll never know. But then at this point Vauxhall was flush with cash. General Motors had invested
millions in three new worldwide “Engineering & Styling Centers of Excellence”, and one of
these was the Vauxhall styling centre that opened in 1964. Maybe this was simply the
styling team showing what they were capable of. That new styling centre would get to work on the
second generation Viva, ironically not their own design but one suggested for them by Detroit.
That embarrassment had led to Detroit installing one of their own as Assistant Director of Design,
Leo Pruneau. He hit on the same thought as Vauxhall – they had a stodgy image that could
be improved with a sports car and in 1965 proposed a concept sports car to display at upcoming motor shows.
They could have used the 2+2 GT concept from a year earlier, or even the Piper Roadster,
but maybe Leo Pruneau wanted to put his own stamp on Vauxhall. He also brought overseas styling
talent including Wayne Cherry who would go on to have a big influence in both Vauxhall and Opel,
and actually GM as well. And even though he was young, Wayne would be the lead
designer on the concept, dubbed the XVR: “Well in 1964 Vauxhall opened up the state
of the art new design centre, and from a design perspective we wanted to show the design abilities
and engineering abilities of Vauxhall as an aspirational vehicle. And designers love 2
seat sports cars, and that’s what became the XVR. Now the XVR had a centre hinged windscreen with
the glass wrapped right around the sides. Now that was really a unique feature at that point
in time. It was very wheel oriented. The surface is pulled out to embrace the wheel
packages. The engine cover was a clamshell to open forward. The boot also opened to the rear.
So, on the show stands the whole vehicle would open up and expose the interior
and the structure that was in the vehicle."
The XVR would be more than just a pretty advertisement.
It was developed in collaboration with the engineering department as a way of
testing their new independent rear suspension, rear disc brakes and the new slant-4 overhead
cam engine. Work began in October 1965 so it could be ready for the motor shows the following year.
The initial clay model was stunning. The concept grew gull wing doors for dramatic
effect and of course it had pop-up headlights with a mechanism borrowed from the Corvette.
By December there was a fibreglass model, and soon an interior which looked like something from
a fighter jet. By February 1966 the car had been assembled in a very deep shade of British Racing
Green – it looked almost black. Despite worries that this concept only conceived 6 months earlier,
wouldn’t arrive in time, it was a smash at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show. GM’s German operation
Opel showed their own sports car concept, the GT, and this wasn’t just a one-off concept – there
were plans to put it into production. Back home from the show, Vauxhall produced
a second XVR and the first was taken on the road for suspension, brake and engine testing.
The second car used a different support method for the gull wing doors that allowed them to open higher,
which was much more practical. That car was shown in Paris and London in autumn where again it
caused heads to turn. Vauxhall’s press for the XVR focused on their ability to create groundbreaking,
cutting-edge designs. The message was clear – this is a new Vauxhall, and our
next passenger cars will be something special. A third XVR was also produced and was shown in 1967.
The first two were destroyed, but the third remained on show at Vauxhall’s headquarters and
survives to this day. If you take a trip to the British Motor Museum, you can see it for yourself.
The XVR was much too complex to become a production car, but maybe Vauxhall could
take the essence of the car and turn it into something that customers could buy? Sketches
of what the car could look like appeared in the summer of 1966, and just a few weeks later
Detroit had it turned it into a full-size clay mock-up. It was photographed next to a Lotus Elan,
and seeing both together might make you think that Vauxhall had just gone out and copied that car!
General Motors took another pass at the design in Detroit, and it was now called the Vauxhall GT,
maybe as an answer to the Opel GT. And in fact the Vauxhall GT’s success was pinned
on its German cousin. If the Opel was a success, then maybe, just maybe GM would look at doing the
Vauxhall GT. Unfortunately, although it’s loved today, the Opel GT wasn’t a hit with
customers and hopes of a Vauxhall GT faded. Well, a Vauxhall sports car might not make
it to production, but the XVR concept had been a successful way of banging the drum about the
Vauxhall brand. So, why not do it again? Wayne Cherry, along with Chris Field was
once again called on to style the car:
"And we wanted to look at packaging,
we wanted to look at aero, we wanted to look at new configurations of vehicles in a new
form of vocabulary. And also I think there was a lot of interest around the Le Mans type cars
with the Lola T70 which is a beautiful long tailed car, even more so with the
917 Porsche. And to do a 4 seater I thought was much more of a challenge than a 2 seater. I mean,
everybody likes to do a 2 seater sports car, but to do a 4 seater, which also has the hatches to
get in the back and then the front, when the door opens the instrument pod swings out.
And it’s also about this cab forward design that was taking place at the
time in racing cars, in Formula 1 cars, sports cars. So, to redo the packaging,
the driver’s forward. There’s a transverse engine in the back, all packaged within the wheelbase
and seats in the rear. It might be a couple of jump seats, but there were seats in the rear!”
Both stylists let their imaginations run wild. If they could make something kids
wanted to draw on the back of their exercise books at school, it stood to reason adults,
who were really big kids, would crave it as well. Where the XVR almost had the driver sitting over
the rear wheels, the new concept, dubbed the SRV went for a cab forward design. This meant putting
the engine at the back like the Porsche 911. And it’s not often you put the words Vauxhall
and Porsche in the same sentence! The engine was a 2.2L 4-cylinder, so the performance definitely
wouldn’t have matched the looks even with a turbocharger gauge on the dashboard.
As Wayne mentioned, the door was awash with dials and this feature would go on to influence the
dials in the door of the Jaguar XJ220 twenty years later. The features included a control to move
fuel around the many tanks distributed around the car to provide better weight distribution.
There was even a digital clock, something pretty special for 1970. Despite this being a concept,
Vauxhall found space to include practical items like a spare wheel. The SRV wasn’t going
to be stuck at the side of the motorway! At the big reveal, management were left
speechless. They were actually concerned that at the motor show punters wouldn’t
believe Vauxhall had actually designed this supercar! At the Motor Show,
the car wasn’t a hit. I’m kidding of course, how could it not be anything than a sensation? This
was a company that just three years earlier were selling cars that looked like this. And somehow
this supercar had four doors and four seats! Wayne Cherry had been the main contributor
to the SRV and his stock in the company grew to the extent that he became the main driving
force behind future Vauxhall passenger cars. In 1975 he became the Design Director.
But Vauxhall’s cars at the start of the 70s weren’t that exciting. Yes, there was the Firenza in 1971
and the Magnum in 1973, sporty passenger cars. Vauxhall souped up the Firenza in 1973 as the
“High Performance” or HP, but was colloquially known as the “droop snoot” after Wayne Cherry’s
front treatment that was integrated into many other 70s Vauxhall designs. There was even
a V8 version that went racing, dubbed “Baby Bertha”. But with Vauxhall sales faltering,
the days of exotic supercar concepts were over. Supercars maybe, but what about sports cars?
By the late 1970s Bob Price was running the show at Vauxhall and he saw a gap in the market for
a cheap sports car, as the Triumph Spitfire and MG Midget were getting old, and British Leyland
didn’t have the money, or maybe the ability, to replace them with anything remarkable
and reliable. But what codename should the new concept use? Well Wayne Cherry wanted “The Force”,
but in the end they went with Equus. That’s “horse” in Latin, a clear swipe
at arch-rival Ford with their Mustang muscle car. Vauxhall would need some help to make it a reality though.
They turned to Panther Westwinds, a maker of retro-styled cars built on a modern
chassis for big kids who wanted their dream car from their childhood now that they had the money.
Panther were themselves creating a monster 6 wheeled sports car, the Panther 6, styled in
part by Vauxhall’s Wayne Cherry. I’ve made a video about it, and there’s a link above. Before this,
Panther had produced the Lima, built using parts from the Vauxhall Magnum and Viva. Maybe Panther
could build the Equus using the Lima chassis? The clay mock-up was built at Vauxhall’s
styling centre in complete secrecy – this was a skunkworks project. Like many cars of this period,
curves were out and sharp lines were the latest fashion. And this was first and foremost an open top,
almost no work was done on adding a roof. Once the shape had been refined with distinctive
side louvres it was shipped off to Panther to turn it into something that could be driven.
The 2.2L engine and interior came from a variety of current Vauxhall vehicles, and the doors were
borrowed from the Cavalier Coupé. Maybe due to complexity of making a boot assembly, luggage
had to be passed through from behind the seats. The Panther Lima chassis was modified a little to
accommodate the new shape and Panther’s boss Bob Jankel was confident it could be in production
within 9 months. Whether that would happen would depend in part on its showing at the
1978 British Motor Show. Again, there was a lot of interest, but in the end the decision
was made not to take it forward to production. There would have been more work needed to make
a practical boot. It would have been a low volume car – after all Panther’s factory
could only handle a few cars at a time. But maybe the largest problem was Vauxhall’s star
was waning. New cars were either world models like the Chevette, or cars designed in Germany by Opel,
with only a few largely unnecessary tweaks to make them a Vauxhall product.
But to Wayne Cherry it was a fantastic car. Maybe this is why the Equus is now in his private car
collection. Wayne Cherry’s star would continue to rise – he’d switch to Opel when Vauxhall’s
styling department closed, maybe not arriving in the Equus as he’s pictured here(!) and would go on
to style the lauded Vauxhall/Opel Calibra in 1989. Vauxhall itself became just a rebranding exercise,
and GMs European operation focused quite rightly on selling into the mass market,
making significant inroads with their inexpensive, easy to maintain and reliable cars. In any case,
in the 80s and the early 90s customers were less interested on out and out sports cars,
and more on souped up versions of mass market cars, like the Cavalier with its 2.5L V6 engine
and the Astra GTE. But after a spate of joyriding, hot hatches were persona non grata. Vauxhall/Opel
still needed a halo product to sell their more practical cars like the new Zafira MPV,
so thoughts once again turned to a sports car. Opel talked with their frequent collaborator Bitter,
but they weren’t interested. However, Lotus were more amenable. They’d collaborated
with Vauxhall a decade earlier on the insane Vauxhall Lotus Carlton, and they needed money to
get the Lotus Elise to comply with upcoming safety legislation. Maybe Vauxhall/Opel could give them
a hand, and Lotus could make a version of the car that they could sell? It was a tempting prospect,
and one that could celebrate Opel’s centenary in 1999. But as the project started in the
summer of 1998, they didn’t have much time. Maybe they could have something
to show for the Geneva Motor Show in spring 1999? But in that case, there was no time to waste!
The people at Vauxhall and Opel were passionate to get the car ready and worked evenings and weekends,
unpaid, to make it happen. The Lotus chassis was altered to fit the new shape penned by Niels
Loeb. The suspension was made more forgiving so the type of people who would be buying this car
didn’t wrap it around a tree. And it would be commercial suicide to use the Rover K-series or
the Toyota engines, so Lotus slotted in Opel’s 2.2L engine and gave it a bit tune as well.
The interior was minimal, due to a lack of time, but it suited the ethos of a two seater sports car.
The team made their tight deadline – the concept was unveiled as the Opel Speedster at the 1999
Geneva Motor Show. Vauxhall was back in the sports car game, and for the first time in
70 years or so it might be something the public could drive. And indeed they could – the following
year the car hit Vauxhall showrooms as the VX220, presumably a nod to the performance
VX4/90 from the 60s. But what did people at the time think of it? Over to me live from
the year 2000 to talk about the VX220’s launch.
“The British car buying public are very excited
about this new amazing sports car from Vauxhall, and how could they not be? It’s been created by
Lotus, makers of the Elise. But that’s its problem really. The VX220 is seen as just a version of the
existing Elise. And customers prefer the Lotus badge to the badge on the boring Vauxhall Vectra.
Plus that styling? The Elise looks better than the awkward VX220. Oh, and by the way, they’re
both the same price. And surely, you’d want to advertise this car as chic and sexy, but they’ve
got Griff Rhys-Jones in his underpants doing a comedy bit. For me, it’s a simple choice – go
with the Lotus. This is Big Car reporting live, well, sort of, from the year 2000.”
The Lotus Elise might be cool, but the VX220 gave the Vauxhall and Opel brands a much needed shot in
the arm. What other car in their range could get to 60mph in under 6 seconds? Vauxhall showed off
an ECO diesel concept of the car in 2002. The 1.3L engine delivered 112hp (84 kW) with a top speed
of 155mph (250 km/h) while being able to return 113mpg (2.5l/100km), not necessarily at the same
time of course! The gull wing doors and long tail echoed the SRV concept from 30 years before.
There was talk of a Holden version as well as a Daewoo Speedster, but it was felt too many modifications
would be needed for the Australian market. Daewoo were going through their own kind of
financial hell at the time, and the company needed steady sales rather than sports car distractions.
Vauxhall had started as a British car manufacturer making sports cars, and it was nice that their
return to sports cars was with a car that was largely designed & manufactured in Britain.
And there was more to come. The car got a faster 2.0L turbocharged engine giving the car an
exhilarating sub 5 second 0-60 time. Then there was the track day VXR with even more performance.
Over in the US, GM were developing a small roadster to take on the popular Mazda MX-5.
As this was a worldwide car platform it made sense to evaluate it as a replacement for the VX220.
So, the car was reworked and shown as the 2003 Vauxhall VX Lightning concept. The Vauxhall
badge was picked over Opel specifically to celebrate Vauxhall’s centenary in 2003.
Inside it was less track day special and more upscale family car, with the exposed
metal from the VX220 making way for leather and full carpeting. There was a promise of a
2.2L 240hp (179 kW) engine. Vauxhall called the car “quintessentially British”. That was
quite a claim for a car that would be built in America using an American chassis. It would
take more than a Union Jack on the side, and a Vauxhall badge to fulfil that claim, but at
least it had a British designer – Simon Cox. The 1960s Vauxhall sports car concepts hadn’t
ever appeared on the road, but there was a good chance that this one would. After all,
it was slated to be produced in the US as the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice. But the Vauxhall
version was dropped as GMs finances imploded. The US model was rebadged and imported to continental
Europe as the Opel GT, rekindling the name Opel had used on its 1960s roadster. But the
car never wore a Vauxhall badge. Maybe it was for the best though. It wasn’t a popular car;
the Opel GT sold only 7,500 cars over 4 years. GMs roadster was heavier than the Mazda MX-5,
and so wasn’t as much fun through the bends. Vauxhall would look elsewhere for a bit of sports
car excitement. Over in Australia GM’s Holden division had been churning out muscle car versions
of the Commodore for decades. Why not bring one over to the UK as a Vauxhall? With shades of the
Vauxhall Lotus Carlton, the VXR8 launched in 2007 with a 6.0L V8 delivering 414hp (309 kW),
and it only cost £35,000 ($44,400 USD, €41,400, $66,700 AUD). Could it be a BMW M5 killer?
It certainly had the raw power. Refinement was something else, but then this stupid level of
unfettered power brought its own joy, and there weren’t all those silly electronic
systems trying to take all the fun away. This might not be a classic sports car, but
it was as close as Vauxhall was going to get in the austerity years after General Motors had gone
bankrupt. Gone were the days in the 1960s when money was being showered on the British division.
But there would be one last try at a sports car in 2016. It was another attempt at rebooting the
Opel GT but would also wear a Vauxhall badge. It was another stunning design, worthy of the
stuff Vauxhall was producing in the 1960s. That was no accident. In the marketing blurb the XVR,
original Opel GT concept and the Vauxhall GT were specifically called out as an inspiration.
It had an interesting powertrain – it was just a 1.0L 3 cylinder 145hp (108 kW) engine capable
of getting the car to 60 in less than 8 seconds. There were fancy door cameras instead of mirrors
which wouldn’t have survived to the production car which Opel told us would arrive for the GT’s 50th
anniversary in 2018. Unfortunately, events outside their control prevented this from happening.
Opel and Vauxhall were sold to PSA, with the resulting company being renamed Stellantis.
Thoughts of a GT sports car disappeared as PSA focused on changing their existing cars
over to using platforms that didn’t require royalty payments back to General Motors.
It would have been fascinating to see some of the Vauxhall concepts make it to production.
Maybe cars like the Piper Roadster would have had some of the success that Triumph and MG’s
open tops had in Europe and North America, and it may not have cost too much if they reused the
Vauxhall Viva chassis and transmission. Maybe it would have had the same fate as the Opel GT
from the 1960s – low volume sales. And maybe if Vauxhall had spent more time on passenger cars
than concepts, they could have become a serious competitor to Ford. We’ll never know. Certainly
by 2000 when the XV220 launched, customers came to see Vauxhall and Opel as purveyors of practical,
dependable cars that were maybe a little boring. The badge certainly wasn’t something aspirational,
so if they wanted a sports car there were plenty of other options that were much cooler. But some
of those Vauxhall concepts in the 1960s are stunning designs that still look amazing.
I couldn’t have done this video without the help of the Vauxpedia website, so if you want
to know more about Vauxhall’s history, this is an excellent site, including much more information
about these cars than I included here. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.