But changes were taking place at Luton. Laurence Pomeroy left in 1919 and went to the Aluminium Corporation in America and his assistant, Clarence King, took over as chief engineer. He was responsible for a costly 3-litre four-cylinder twin-cam 16-valve competition car in 1922, designed for the Grand Prix formula which had expired at the end of 1921! Such an extravagance was undertaken against a deteriorating financial situation because, although Vauxhall made a £67,118 profit in 1918, this had been converted into a massive £221,759 loss in 1921. The Luton company was back in the black with a modest £54,132 profit in 1923, but Vauxhall Motors had paid no dividends since 1920.

 Above: The fins were dropped for 1963 with the introduction of the

PB series, shown here in Cresta form.

Although the Vauxhall range was expanded and up-dated, in 1925 the firm built only 1388 cars, had 1820 people on the payroll and its factory had grown to 10½ acres and it returned a profit of £36,083. It was also bought by the mighty American General Motors Corporation. Since he became its president in 1923, Alfred Sloan had been endeavouring to rival the Ford Motor Company, which had established a British factory at Trafford Park, Manchester in 1911. In addition, the imposition of McKenna Duties in 1915 meant that imported cars paid a 33 1/3% duty and there was thus a great incentive for an American company to establish a British presence behind the tariff wall.

General Motors made strenuous efforts to buy Morris, and then Austin, and when the latter deal floundered in 1925, the Corporation turned to Vauxhall. Alfred Sloan subsequently maintained that the purchase was "in no sense a substitute for Austin; indeed, I looked upon it as a kind of experiment in overseas manufacture." General Motors "only" paid $2,575,291 (£543,310) for the Luton company which was its first foreign plant outside North America.

Above: The proprietary Vauxhall Velox Grosvenor estate conversion

There was a public outcry at the purchase, which was confirmed in December 1925 and motoring magazines were inundated with protests from their readers that such a prestigious British company had been bought by the Americans. Consequently, the General Motors connection with Vauxhall was not mentioned in the firm's advertisements and promotional material in the inter-war years and The Story of Vauxhall, published by the company in 1946, made no reference to General Motors in its 51 pages.

Leslie Walton, who lost a number of friends outraged by the deal, agreed to stay  on as chairman, though Percy Kidner departed, along with other Luton stalwarts, to establish an Oxford garage business. the firm now needed a new managing director and he arrived in September 1929 in the shape of 39-year old Charles Bartlett, who had previously held a similar post with General Motors of Hendon, Middlesex. This had been established in 1909 and, from 1925, when McKenna Duties were extended to cover commercial vehicles, Chevrolet and GMC trucks were imported in knocked-down form and assembled there, along with cars in the GM range. Bartlett had joined the company after the First World War as a clerk in the accounts department and became managing director in 1926. A financial survey of the operation attracted the attention of James Mooney, head of the Corporation's Export Companies, who had been instrumental in recommending the Vauxhall purchase to Sloan.

Above : The 1957 F Victor

Above : Vauxhall's own production estate version of the Victor

Vauxhall, by this time, was in a parlous state. It only built 1278 cars in 1929, its lowest figure since 1922, and lost a record £290,000. this was, in part, due to Sloan's procrastination and, by that year, he recognised that "we either had to build up Vauxhall or give up the British market."

Mooney was convinced the firm was worth saving and asked Bob Evans, GM's regional director for Europe, to Luton to see how the business could be made profitable. Evans proposed, and it was agreed, that Vauxhall began making parts for the Chevrolet trucks that Hendon was importing and, in 1930, the loss was cut to £65,000. By that time, Vauxhall had got a taste for trucks and the result was the Chevrolet-based Bedford of 1931, the name echoing the name of the country in which Luton is located which did not have a whiff of America about it! In 1931 Vauxhall built 11,225 Bedfords, compared with a mere 3927 cars, and Vauxhall was back in the black with a £87,000 profit. Consequently, the Hendon assembly operation was closed down in 1932 after 54,462 commercials had been assembled.

Next Month - Part III : With Vauxhall now profitable...