But back in the day Vauxhall made some real proper driver cars and they looked really good too.
The VX/490 was a large and very sporty looking four door saloon with real sporty set up. In 1971 it had an aluminium head, twin carbs and disc brakes. Top speed was 90mph hence the name and it would accelerate to 60 in under 20 seconds, heady stuff back then! The Cavalier mk1 was Vauxhalls saviour at a time when sales were low and the possibility of plant closures very real. It drove and sold well and in coupe form, was a really good looking car. Performance was as good as it’s handling too& as a result it sold well, reversing the fortunes at Vauxhall HQ.

Too old for you?
Let’s fast forward to the 80’s, the decade of good music, good films and good fashion.  More importantly, you could get a Vauxhall Cavalier Sri, or if you waited long enough, the Sri 130 with its 2.0 engine and lower side decals. You could also get the Carlton 2200 CD which again was a large family car with some real performance abilities. Disc brakes, fuel injection, alloy wheels & a comfortable interior. The big one? The Astra mk1 GTE with its body coloured body kit and bucket seats. It’s performance & handling was as outstanding as it looked, especially with its digital dashboard.

But it gets better as we go on. The 90’s saw the Senator CD with its 24v head, as smooth as it was fast, beautifully made and famously had no options as it had everything included in its price, such as heated seats, sunroof, twin AC, cruise control and could be optioned with a manual gearbox. It also had the digital dashboard along with a radio cassette player and a separate CD player below it. The engine produced over 200 bhp and it shot to 60 in 9.1 seconds which helped endear it to the Police forces across the UK.

But the biggest, baddest, fastest of them all? The outrageous Lotus Carlton, with its 3.6 twin turbo engine which produced 377 bhp, 415lb/ft of torque which helped it get to 60 in 5.4 seconds on its way to a staggering 176 mph. It wore a body kit that looked like an extra from Star Wars and was only available in one colour, Imperial Green. It created an outrage when politicians found out a four door family car from Vauxhall could travel so fast, I’m sure newspapers complained about it too, it was that outstanding. We could also talk about the beautifully designed Calibra, which I remember looking at in a showroom way back in 1990 thinking how could this be available to buy?

Why am I waxing lyric about the heritage of a British icon?
To highlight the depths to which they have fallen in such a short time. In the early 2000’s you could buy real cars with a real heritage, that were a pleasure to drive and own. They had a performance pedigree, build quality and looked good, with all the options you could reasonably want back then.  Within just 15 years the brand fell to its lowest form, selling tat to people who didn’t care what they drove, how it looked or what it said about them. The brand became vanilla, in the worse sense.

How did it happen, I hear you ask?
Management. Plain and simple. They lost interest, didn’t know or even worse, didn’t care. Churning out automotive complacency, wasting metal and paint on yuk. It became as boring a brand as it was exciting, very. How did they let this happen? Why did they let this happen? Simple.
England. World leaders.
In bad management.