Vauxhall Motors Centenary Set 

• 2006 
• VX1004 
• Vanguards 
• Vauxhall 

1597025

Model cars

Vauxhall Motors Centenary Set

VX1004

Car, Gift set, Limited Edition

2006

China

Vauxhall is the UK arm of General Motors (GM); for many years the world’s largest car manufacturer. However, it was not always so, in the company’s formative years their talented technical director Laurence Pomeroy designed machines, such as the legendary Prince Henry Vauxhall of 1911, that were definitely sporting cars for the nobility and during The Great War (1914-1918) Vauxhalls were the British Army’s predominant staff cars. The 30-98 and other models carried that reputation forward into the 1920s but did not sell in sufficient numbers to make money. So, when in 1925 GM (then a purely American company) were looking for production capacity in the UK they approached Vauxhall, whose board accepted their $2.5 million takeover offer, making Luton GM’s first overseas manufacturing plant. However the origins of the Vauxhall name lie in the Middle Ages; to when, at around the turn of the 14th century, a French soldier named Fulk Le Bréant (who was in the employ of Plantagenet King John) married heiress Lady Margaret de Redvers. Her Lambeth home became known as Fulk’s Hall, and as time passed this was corrupted to Vauxhall. Scottish engineer Alexander Wilson set up an iron works there in 1857 and that company started making cars in 1903. By 1905 the now diverse ‘Vauxhall Ironworks’ expanded to Luton and in 1907, after some reorganisation, ‘Vauxhall Motors’ became a separate company. Fulk Le Bréant’s family emblem, a Griffin, (half lion, half eagle) is still used by Vauxhall to this day. GM’s investment produced gradual growth and with the launch of Britain’s first unitary construction car, the H-type 10HP of 1837, they were firmly established as one of the UK’s foremost producers of innovative but affordble cars. This Centenary Set presents four of Vauxhall’s most important post war cars. The Velox, Viva, Cavalier and Astra show that, whilst Vauxhall have often been at the forefront of fashionable design, they have remained, above all, stylish, practical and attainable. Contains: VA 06411 (Vauxhall Velox PA - Black); VA 08711 (Vauxhall Viva HB - Pageant Red); VA 09407 (Vauxhall Astra MkV - Papyrus); VA 09805 (Vauxhall Cavalier MkII - Helios Blue). Limited Edition 2.210 pcs. (with certificate)