"Home of the Vivaro"
Having found myself in Luton a few times, thankfully passing through or entering the airport on most occasions, the Vauxhall griffin has always been an icon of the town which never failed to at least spark a short conversation in the car. Like any major industry or heavy machinery, the brain always triggers a small amount of wonderment as to what makes it tick. With Vauxhall being a brand that pretty much owes its existence to appeasing the British public these days, the closure of either Luton or Ellesmere Port was thought to be an eventuality at some point.
Vauxhall
Having found myself in Luton a few times, thankfully passing through or entering the airport on most occasions, the Vauxhall griffin has always been an icon of the town which never failed to at least spark a short conversation in the car. Like any major industry or heavy machinery, the brain always triggers a small amount of wonderment as to what makes it tick. With Vauxhall being a brand that pretty much owes its existence to appeasing the British public these days, the closure of either Luton or Ellesmere Port was thought to be an eventuality at some point.
Vauxhall
Founded in the Lambeth area of London, in a village known as Vauxhall, a Scottish engineer by the name of Alexander Wilson had created a firm to produce small pumps and marine engines during 1857.
By 1903, during what would be known as the "Brass Era", and as the early interest of the horseless carriage grew, the Vauxhall Iron Works, of the Alex Wilson Company, produced their first automotive offering to the market at a rate of 70 vehicles in the first year. As expansion became a necessity, the company would move their vehicle production to Luton in 1905 before later rebranding to a more simplistic Vauxhall Motors in 1907.
Vauxhall Motors would become a brand known for reliable and sporty designs with much of their early success attributed by an assistant draughtsman by the name of Laurence Pomeroy. Whilst covering the 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. His design, the Type-Y, would prove to be so successful that he'd take the role of chief designer that same year.
The Type-Y would go on to form the base of Vauxhall's many early deigns, primarily the Type-A, and allowed the company to produce many highly-coveted high-end cars.
In a short period, the company soon found themselves unattractive by the end of the world war. As motoring become more mainstream, Vauxhall's costly products and slow production rates saw the company fall into financial trouble with a need to find investment.
General Motors would enter the scene in 1925 by acquiring the firm for $2.5 Million, following encouragement from GM's president Alfred P. Sloan, during their early years of mass expansion and success in the USA before going on to purchase Opel in 1929. Since the purchase of Vauxhall proved unpopular amongst GM staff, the firm was forcefully remodelled to producing more competitive and middle-market products. The first of many cars, designed under the auspices of GM's control and engineering practices, proved far more success with the Vauxhall Cadett 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, due to the success of the Light Six model, demand would skyrocket.
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 competition grew and Vauxhall's new range came to market resulting in 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 would put a pause to car production.
The war effort saw the might of Luton, and the newly established Bedford Trucks subdivision, in full swing. The factories designed and kicked out over 5,500 churchill tanks and a quater-million trucks between 1940 and 1944, despite bombing raids during 1940.
Post-war Vauxhall, and their sub-brand of Bedford Trucks, 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 American derived GM design. Despite this, the car would remain competitive.
Opel
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.
Beyond the 1980's the Ellesmere Port facility would become home to the newly launched Opel 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 Facility would close.
Isuzu to Stellantis
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 Izuzu. The partnership resulted in Isuzu-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 Isuzu 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 low-roof 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 Citroën 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 Citoren Jumpy van now badged under Fiat, Peugeot, Vauxhall/Opel, Toyota, and Iveco.
A view back to the goals set by Opel 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 moved to Ellesmere Port in 2025 and the Luton factory would close.
The visits
It had been rumoured that we'd be seeing an April 2025 shutdown of the now 120-Year-Old factory and it made sense to keep a closer eye as the days progressed.
At some point between April 1st and 30th tools should have been put down for one final time.
The news came a bit prematurely:
"Vehicle production at Vauxhall's Luton plant has come to an end after 120 years..." - BBC News, 28 March '25.
Within what felt like a matter of minutes, myself and @mockney reject were discussing the site and the various "what if..." scenarios that could play out on such an early visit.
We settled on the idea that it would be unlikely many night-shift workers would be within the walls of a place they'd just been made redundant from and would instead be down the local enjoying a quiet night with their former colleagues. The other potential positive was the fact security would be also be down the pub or, if they had turned up, trying to conduct their operations across a site that felt entirely different.
We converged in the town one evening, behind the back-drop of noisy aircraft and empty streets, and got to work scouring the site.
Our theory of silence was quickly proven correct as we gazed upon mammoth site, and as quickly as it took us to pay for parking, we were in.
A secondary visit would come to fruition a few weeks later with little across the site, in terms of security, changing.
Map
The site is formed of 4 key buildings:
The press shop, where body panels are cut and stamped into shape.
Body assembly.
General Assembly and Paint, the largest section in terms of land coverage.
Stores (part of the Press building)
It had been rumoured that we'd be seeing an April 2025 shutdown of the now 120-Year-Old factory and it made sense to keep a closer eye as the days progressed.
At some point between April 1st and 30th tools should have been put down for one final time.
The news came a bit prematurely:
"Vehicle production at Vauxhall's Luton plant has come to an end after 120 years..." - BBC News, 28 March '25.
Within what felt like a matter of minutes, myself and @mockney reject were discussing the site and the various "what if..." scenarios that could play out on such an early visit.
We settled on the idea that it would be unlikely many night-shift workers would be within the walls of a place they'd just been made redundant from and would instead be down the local enjoying a quiet night with their former colleagues. The other potential positive was the fact security would be also be down the pub or, if they had turned up, trying to conduct their operations across a site that felt entirely different.
We converged in the town one evening, behind the back-drop of noisy aircraft and empty streets, and got to work scouring the site.
Our theory of silence was quickly proven correct as we gazed upon mammoth site, and as quickly as it took us to pay for parking, we were in.
A secondary visit would come to fruition a few weeks later with little across the site, in terms of security, changing.
Map
The site is formed of 4 key buildings:
The press shop, where body panels are cut and stamped into shape.
Body assembly.
General Assembly and Paint, the largest section in terms of land coverage.
Stores (part of the Press building)
Press Shop and Stores
Having quickly shot for the first opening, we found ourselves surrounded by crates of unused stock awaiting disposal.
Scampering upstaris we came across this small teamwork/training rig.
I can't imagine these cars wood work.
sorry
The main storage area was neatly arranged with newly added components strewn across.
A shed load of engines and transmissions.
We eventually found the staircase towards the roof which became more derelict as we climbed. Once at the top, we were able to scour the site of activity.
Back inside, we headed to the basement.
Down here stood more of the same in terms of newly produced components awaiting their turn on the production lines.
A fair few engines down here were marked with "Do Not Use" or "Scrap".
Pushing into the press shop, the site felt much more barren.
The roof structure in here was rather impressive when viewing the ironwork and supports
Eventually, we found the sole-remaining press.
Body Assembly
Skipping forward to the second visit, a quick peek into the body assembly revealed the car-factory classic: Robots!
And more Robots!
As expected, this area was also rammed with unused panels.
To Be Continued...
