The History
In 1957 in a place called Vauxhall in the Lambeth area of London, a Scottish engineer by the name of Alexander Wilson created a firm to produce small pumps and marine engines.
But by 1903 things change an Alexander developed an interest in the horseless carriage, the Vauxhall Iron Works of the Alex Wilson Company produced 70 vehicles as their first automotive offering to the market in the first year with demand growing through the next decade.
Expansion soon became a necessity and the company relocated to Luton in 1905 in in 1907 rebranded to Vauxhall Motors.
Vauxhall Motors soon become known for their reliable and sporty designs with much of their early success attributed by an assistant draughtsman by the name of Laurence Pomeroy. Whilst covering for the chief designer, Pomeroy would be given a chance to design his first engine during 1907 to compete within a durability trial in 1908. Pomeroy's design, the Type-Y, would prove to be so successful that he'd take the role of chief designer that same year.
Despite early success, the company soon found themselves unattractive by the end of the first war and as motoring become more commonplace, Vauxhall's costly products and slow production rates saw the company fall into financial trouble with a need to find investment.
American company General Motors showed interest in 1925 and bought Vauxhall for $2.5 Million, before going on to purchase Opel in 1929. With the purchase of Vauxhall being unpopular amongst GM staff, the firm was quickly remodelled to producing more competitive and middle-market products. The first of many cars, designed under GM's control and engineering practices, proved far more success with the Kadett and Light Six selling in numbers comparable to the more established firms.
The Luton factory would also see major changes in size and modernisation which allowed prices to drop further and push the firm towards the top of the British market. By 1933, demand would skyrocket and Vauxhall would continue to grow through the 1930's under GMs support, focussing towards smaller cars and engineering improvements across each model.
The Luton factory would see greater growth towards 1934 as European completion grew and Vauxhall's new range came to market resulting with the 10-4 model entering the market in 1937.
The 10-4, like the Light Six previously, greatly exceeded Luton's production capacity with over 10,000 models leaving the plant within only 6-Months and highlighted the rapid improvements that had been made in the last 12 years.
As hopes grew and production ramped up almost continuously, the Second World War threw a spanner in the works and put a pause to car production. The war effort saw the might of Luton, and the newly established Bedford Trucks plant, in full swing. The factories designed kicked out over 5,500 Churchill tanks and a quarter-million Bedford trucks between 1940 and 1944, despite bombing raids during August 1940.
Post-war Vauxhall, and their sub-brand of Bedford, would be the first British brand to switch back to civilian vehicle production as full production returned by September of 1945. Despite a rapid return, a shortage of materials and a government mandate for at least 75% of vehicles to be exported, few vehicles would be available to purchase. A further rationalisation plan by GM and the removal of a power-based tax system then saw Luton producing only the, Type-H based, Type-L in two options. Future developments in car design would continue to be restricted by GM's one-body policy with the Type-E becoming the new face of Vauxhall in 1951 which drafted in a greater amount of GM design. Despite this, the car would remain competitive.
Jumping onto the 1960's, as the rust-prone Velox and earlier Victor models bowed out to the newer Victor and Viva, component and vehicle production had expanded north to Ellesmere Port from 1962, to alleviate pressure on Luton where high production rates had been the identified cause of poor build quality.
Within this, General Motors began to further merge the Vauxhall and Opel firms in order to avoid competing against themselves in the same markets with entire models now shared across both companies. By 1972 the FE Vauxhall Victor would be the last all-British Vauxhall to enter production as later vehicles would become re-styled or re-badged designs shared with Opel.
The Vauxhall brand would be removed entirely from Europe by 1979 and the Opel mark would be withdrawn from the UK by 1988 following production of the Opel Manta coming to an end.
Beyond the 1980's the Ellesmere Port facility would become home to the newly launched Opel/Vauxhall Astra whilst the Luton plant continued to build a collection of Opel-based cars such as the Carlton and Cavalier (later the Vectra) with other models utilising Opel facilities in Spain and Germany.
By the end of the 1990's, the facility would begin a gradual wind-down of car manufacturing and once the Vectra-B had ended production in 2002, the Luton car facility would close.
Meanwhile, Bedford who acted as the commercial vehicle department of Vauxhall, also experienced a similar rise and fall during the post-war period.
By the mid-1970's, following the market domination by the Ford Transit against Bedford CF and the aging TK-Based trucks competing against European manufactures, Bedford entered into a joint venture with Isuzu. The partnership resulted in Izuzu-Beford Company (IBC For short) which utilised the Bedford Vans portion of the Vauxhall plant from 1982 producing the Bedford Midi and the Rascal in '87.
From 1992, the Bedford brand was dropped in favour of Vauxhall following the introduction of the Frontera. General Motors would buy-out Izuzu from the IBC firm returning, what was formerly Bedford, back under Vauxhall in 1998. As car production prepared to end in 2002, the Luton plant would continue on with production of the Renault Traffic family of vans. Beyond 2002 more of the Traffic family of vans moved to France, leaving mostly RHD variants built at Luton.
As 2017 rolled around, with General Motors reporting European losses of over $250 Million in the year prior and Opel's plans to transition to an EV only manufacturer, Peugeot S.A (PSA) would acquire the Opel and Vauxhall brands from GM. Following the transition to PSA, the Renault-based Vauxhall Vivaro would be replaced with the Citroen Jumpy-based model in 2018.
A year on from the PSA purchase, the Fiat-Chrysler (FCA) group would agree to a merger with Peugeot creating what is now known as Stellantis. This merger saw the Luton facility producing numerous variants of the Citroën Jumpy van badged under Fiat, Peugeot, Vauxhall/Opel, Toyota, and Iveco.
The goals set by Opel back in 2017, to move to a fully EV fleet, placed concern on the Luton factory given its dated design and the cost of re-tooling which lead to rumours of closure. By late 2024, Vauxhall announced that production would move to Ellesmere Port in 2025 and the Luton factory would close. The last Vivaro rolled off of the Luton Production line on Friday the 28th of March 2025……..
The Explore
As a car mad 17 year old in 1992 you dropped into one of two categories, Ford or Vauxhall, The Ford boys had mk1 & 2 Escort’s us Vauxhall boys had Chevette’s or Astra’s. Of course this was before I found my love for the more expensive Volkswagen.
I had a Chevette, my first modified car, lowered, loud exhaust, tinted windows and twin carbs. So you could say Vauxhall has held a small place in my heart for a long while and when the news was reported that the Luton van plant was closing my ears pricked up and the wait was on.
As stated in the history above the last van rolled out of the Luton plant on Friday the 28th of March 2025…..
On Saturday the 29th after parking way too far away from the Luton plant a pair of hoody wearing enthusiastic idiots approached the perimeter fence of the plant, “just to have a look”
I mean the plant hadn’t been closed for 24 hours yet and said idiots expected it be heaving with workers. Although they had convinced themselves they said workers may be out having leaving drinks.
Well it seemed that maybe myself and @KPUrban_ may have been correct, leaving drinks it was, the place was deserted. The lights were indeed on and nobody was home.
Not to go into the where for how and why but we soon found ourselves on the opposite side of the fence and once again heading into the unknown.
Our first port of call was the taller tower we could see, it appeared to have some kind of training school in it, but we headed to the roof to purvey what would be out playground for the next few hours and more importantly play spot the secca.
Looks like they might have been out on the piss too lol
We hatched a plan to get us to the bits of the site we wanted to see and headed into the belly of the beast.
