Vauxhall and I

[inconsistant]

Trigger, I hope this might go some way to cheering you up. I've been meaning to post this for ages so, in memory of your Astra...

 

-----

 

My Grandad started his career as a carpenter based in Islington, N London (at that time not the nicest of areas) then he and my Granny moved to Luton before WW2 because Vauxhall Motors were recruiting skilled woodworkers to work at the expanding factory to build timber frames and wood dashboards. This, of course was in the days when cars had a lot of wood in them. My Grandparents moved from London to Luton, bought a new build semi near the airport and started a family. They had 2 boys, my Uncle and my Dad. My Grandad  always worked on the production line but his skill and passion for woodworking were left behind as cars became more metal, and manufacture became more mechanised so he gradually retrained and reskilled. 

 

He was an active union official at the Luton plant and was passionate and outspoken about workers rights, respect for employees and fairness in return for hard work and dedication. He always cycled the mile or two to work rain or shine. He bought a new Vauxhall car every couple of years through the workers discount scheme, and these cars were his absolute pride and joy, always garaged and always well presented. Through the 1970s he had Viva HB then HCs working up to an HC saloon in SL trim, which may have had a vinyl roof and bright rim embellishers among other luxuries. My grandmother was so proud of their move up the trim levels and I remember her sitting in it with her smart hat on as if she was the queen of Luton. Not in a Hyacinth Bucket sort of way I hasten to add… she wasn't a show off, just proud that my Grandad’s hard work had enabled them to own something nice. My grandparents were fanatical caravaners and their Vivas took them all over Britain and later Europe. My Grandad’s cars always had a towbar fitted along with mud flaps, an AA badge on the grill, one of those wind deflectors on the drivers window so that you could have ventilation without draughts, and a green tinted strip along the top of the windscreen.

 

As Vauxhalls became wood free my Grandad, with a family to feed and a modest mortgage to pay, retrained to maintain his job on the Vauxhall production line, for a number of years in the late 70s I remember him working on Chevette production. This was when I was a kid and fanatical about cars. The Chevette was a car that the workers were proud of and enjoyed working on as it felt like Vauxhall was at a turning point in the cars they built and the Chevette was a big step forward from the Viva, and apparently was more enjoyable to build. It was Chevettes that killed him in the end a year or two after retiring in the early 80’s… he ended his career on the Chevette production line sanding back the lead filler that smoothed over the spotwelds on body panels which it would seem (might have) caused the cancer he died of in the early 80s. That's how I was told it as a kid anyway, although I think he also worked in the paint shop so who knows… He always worked saturday mornings (overtime I imagine?) and I remember going to meet him from the factory gate on a Saturday lunchtime when we went up there to stay for the weekend. His factory gate was close to where the new entrance to Luton Airport is. I would have absolutely loved to see inside that factory but never got the chance.

 

I don’t go to Luton much but it makes me a bit sad to see what it's like there now. I remember as a kid and a young teenager (late 70’s and first half of the 80’s) being really excited at getting a sneaky peak at the brand new cars lined up the other side of the factory fence as we drove along the road along the perimeter and I used to get my dad to drive as slowly as possible so I could see if there was anything new or exciting lurking the other side of the fence. There used to be fields of Vauxhalls parked up all around the airport waiting to be delivered and at the time it felt like the whole place was thriving and alive with car production. Although with the benefit of hindsight it may have had more to do with over production and lack of demand. Still, it was exciting seeing rows and rows of hundreds of brand new cars.

 

I’m pretty sure that if you grew up post war in Luton you were guaranteed a job at Vauxhall, as was the case in may Industrial towns and cities in the UK at that time. From school my Uncle also went to work for Vauxhall at the Luton factory but he was 'white collar' so was in the adjacent offices. He worked in the design department planning the production lines for new models of Vauxhall cars & Bedford vans. He had a very different view of how things should be compared to my Grandad and family get togethers often involved political/ideological management vs worker type arguments. This was Thatchers Britain, and my Grandad despised her more than anything else in the world. For such a kind gentle man Thatcher’s words and actions often got him quite angry. 

 

My uncle was always getting me brochures and literature from work, especially Bedford Van & Truck stuff since that’s what he spent most of his time working on. I wasn't really that interested in them because they were lorries rather than cars, but since I had (still have) an extensive collection of brochures I kept them anyway. I’ll try to dig them out and scan them. I scanned and posted a Bedford HA van brochure a while ago, it’s on here somewhere. My Uncle used to have a new Vauxhall every year, he had Vivas, Chevette 4 door saloons and then Mk1 Cavaliers (especially remember a white Mk1 Cav GL in white with a reddish/burgundy interior where absolutely everything including the dashboard was red. It was one that had ’Cavalier’ written in an elaborate font on the back, whereas the one that replaced it had ‘Cavalier’ in a sold blocky font. I used to be fanatical about that sort of detail on cars in those days. I think he also had an early Carlton in that butterscotch angel delight colour they did. It was one of the droop snoot front ones that must be almost extinct now.

 

My dad used to have some of his, and my Grandad’s year old cars, so throughout the 70s we had a run of about 6 Vivas, starting with an HB saloon in dark green when I was a toddler then 2 blue HC saloons followed by a white HC estate and then an identical HC estate in a loud 1970's orangey yellow. In the late 70's my dad got his first company car, a Morris Marina. After that he had a Cortina and then stuck with Fords as company cars for the rest of the 80s, so during this period my other Grandad was offered the year old cars that my dad would have had, starting with Chevettes (I remember an early gold 3 door hatch and then a blue 3 door hatch with the flush headlights) followed by a brown Mk1 Astra 5 door almost identical to the one Louise2cv has/had, then a Mk2 Astra like the one that Trigger has just lost, then a Silver Mk3 Astra Merit and finally his last car was an early (G reg?) 5 door low spec auto Cavalier Mk3 hatchback in that flat blue they did them in. We were the only bit of my family who didn’t have a Vauxhall, until my other Grandad died in the mid 90's and my mum inherited that blue auto Cav. It was immaculate, low mileage, not a scratch on it, and the most horrible thing I have ever driven. I never really liked Vauxhalls as cars to own and drive. I respect them and have a fondness for them, but I’d never buy one. Probably.

 

Anyway… my Uncle gradually moved over from Vauxhall Cars to Bedford Trucks and then when Bedford Trucks got sold off in the mid 80’s (I’m sure Thatcher was involved in this but my Grandad had passed away by then so could only spin in his grave at the injustice) my Uncle worked for the new owners ‘AWD’ who made 4 & 6WD versions of existing Bedford trucks to service military contracts and anyone else that needed lots of traction above all else in a truck. I think they were trying to be the Audi of trucks (4wd was very sexy back then). They couldn't use the Bedford name as that was kept by GM for rebadging Suzuki minivans as Rascals and Isuzu vans as the Midi. When AWD inevitably went tits up after few years the bloke that owned it started a truck company under his own name (David Brown?) over near Cambridge and my Uncle stuck with him initially only to be made redundant when that inevitably went tits up too after a couple of years. My Uncle still lives in Luton and it makes me sad when we visit to see what the factory site looks like now. Looking back the 70s and 80s seemed like a golden era for Vauxhall Luton. It was an exciting place to go if you were a kid that liked cars. And that, folks, is the role that Vauxhall played in my upbringing (the above is probably full of inaccuracies but is my recollection/how I understood things then).

[oldcars]

Really enjoyed reading that 

[beko1987]

Outstanding!

[DVee8]

Great reading that thanks. My boys do the same at Nissan if/when they come to meet me at work,they have a look into Tha compound and watch the transporters being loaded.

[trigger]

That's a lovely read, thank you sharing it with us.

[mercrocker]

Seconded.   Thank you!

[Squire_Dawson]

Very good. Working Saturday mornings was commonplace in the old days.

[Alusilber]

As it happens, I stayed in the Luton Airport Premier Inn en route to Farnborough a few weeks ago, and discovered it was directly opposite the Vauxhall HQ office building. I believe there's still the IBC van factory there too, though I didn't see that.

[Lord Sterling]

What a great read! I guess some cars do leave an impression on us more than anything else. For me it was the Mk1 Rover 800/Sterling.

 

Thank you for sharing.

[purplebargeken]

That was a really good read

 

Reminded me a bit of my Dad's journey through Ford. He started as a crane driver in 1963 when Ford was based at Hanger 3 at Speke Airport

[mercrocker]

Stories such as these always reinforce the connection between cars and people.....I am not a big social animal but I do enjoy folk coming up to one of my Morrises and telling me they worked at Cowley.    

 

If you ever find a book called "The Car Makers" by Graham Turner, grab it.     Absolutely fascinating although of limited appeal to people trying to connect with anything later than about 1964/5.   

[I_am_Diesel]

I really enjoyed reading your memories. Takes me back to the early 80's when my Dad bought a Mk1 Cavalier Sportshatch. It was a nice car and a few years later it was replaced by a Mk2 diesel hatchback.

[tooSavvy]

Great reading that thanks. My boys do the same at Nissan if/when they come to meet me at work,they have a look into Tha compound and watch the transporters being loaded.

I heard it said that when Nissan set up at the airport and the transporter contractor was hiring new loader/drivers, a 'few' Bluebirds were... errm... remodelled >> off the top rack!!

 

No second interview, peeps

 

 

TS

[DVee8]

Yeah, a few went over the upper deck.

[purplebargeken]

There used to be a basement room at Halewood where disagreements were 'sorted'. Dad opinion was always the correct one (ex-army boxer)

[Uncle Jimmy]

My father's father started off in the 1920's working for Frazer-Nash in Kingston upon Thames.

He never made the transition to metal and work on a car production line so he next worked for Hawker making the wooden parts of Hurricanes and then worked on barges and the like on the river.

I think you carry a bit of your ancestors around with you, I've always worked with wood so it goes.

[egg]

Nice story, we could do with more of these I think!

 

Vauxhall and I? Top Morris-sey album. I had him down as a Ford man though - some good chod in this Vid...

 

[Guest Lord Sward]

My Uncle is 65 and lives out the back of the Luton plant on Dunstable Road.  They've owned the house since the early '50s.  The place has suffered similar to Detroit; very few manufacturing jobs and White Flight.  They moved there for the hospital, not for the factory.  

 

My connect with Vauxhall is from when they shifted their Head Office operations from Luton to Newcastle 11 years ago.  I was offered the chance to move to Luton last year (to Charlton House to be precise for all you GM fans) but I couldn't afford nor face living there.  Subsequently me along with 125 others were made redundant on Christmas week last year.

 

I suggest if any of you people get a chance to tour either UK GM plant, then you take it without hesitation.  They are good, nay, World Class plants and I hope they are fully supported following Brexit.  

[mouseflakes]

Sorry, not had time to read the post yet, but already a '+1' for the Morrissey reference from me too.

[fatharris]

My old man has had a few Vauxhalls over the years - first a B reg Carlton in Blue when I was about 4, it had a Moss alarm that went off whenever it was looked at funnily. That lasted two weeks before he traded it in for what I later found out was plumes of blue smoke, the trader swapped it for a B reg Montego saloon.

 

Later, he chopped in his SAAB 9000 for a Mk3.5 Astra 1.4 Merit automatic. N989YOG was the registration and it was simple basic motoring. Dreadfully slow, and the speakers had blown and he couldn't be arsed to change them, so he only had the one cassette in the stereo from his collection that didn't have any bass. That album was Right Said Fred. Eep.

 

Eventually, he owned a 2002 Fiesta Flight (Base model pushrod engine and no frills at all) and PXd it against a 2002 Astra SXi 3dr, seemed nice enough but by then I had a car of my own so I stopped paying attention to his cars. Eventually PXd again for a Yellow Megane coupe.

 

Me? I've never owned one, I've never found one I wanted enough to buy, but I always keep my eye out.

[tooSavvy]

A while ago my employers had a contract mantaining the 'food vending machines/cashless card system' at various places.

 

One was Landrover Liverpool... When an 'update of software' came out, every unit had to be attended by me with a thumbstick.

 

The vending staff, putting food and drink cans in, have electric buggies... It was a real treat to see LR Evoqe in pre paint and down the welding lines - those whitehot snots really do fly about!!

 

Very impressive

 

The canteen [free noshhes 4 me] still FordSpeak 'Escort lounge'

 

 

TS

[Timewaster]

Thanks for posting that. Just to clear up, AWD was owned by David Brown and in 1992 the post bankruptcy remains were purchased by Marshall specialist vehicles in Cambridge.

 

I think it is still going, although the sister company Marshall Truck and Bus has been sold off and I seem to remember that production has moved to Egypt.

[AltheJazzman]

"I'd never buy one. Probably". Challenge accepted. How many Shiters does it take to persuade @inconsistant to buy a nice "angel delight butterscotch" coloured 70's Vauxhall?

Lovely story and connections to the industry though. I can't claim any such links. I'm only into Vauxhalls because it was a cheap option when I was young, there's accidentally a reasonably big tuning community for my engine, and I get huge satisfaction out of keeping something maintained for as long as possible.

[goosey]

On 07/08/2016 at 21:46, Timewaster said:

Thanks for posting that. Just to clear up, AWD was owned by David Brown and in 1992 the post bankruptcy remains were purchased by Marshall specialist vehicles in Cambridge.

 

I think it is still going, although the sister company Marshall Truck and Bus has been sold off and I seem to remember that production has moved to Egypt.

Still going It’s now Marshalls Land Systems, I was there a few weeks ago, they operate out of Cambridge Airport