CM Visit: Vauxhall Special Vehicle Dept
Touring the Luton plant.
Vauxhall’s award-winning Astras (mainly Sports Tourer models) hail from Ellesmere Port, Liverpool, while its Luton plant in Bedfordshire (established in 1905) produces both Opel- and Vauxhallbadged Vivaro commercial vehicles. However, there is much more going on at Luton than producing vans alone.
With the so-called Blue Light sector being worth about £250 million per year, Vauxhall has cemented its expertise in supplying bespoke police vehicles to the Home Office, by relocating its specialist vehicle conversion centre from Millbrook to its Luton base. The move created 50 additional jobs and opened in November last year. With the capacity to convert 2500 vehicles annually, the specialist vehicles operation has also become the largest police car converter in Europe. Examples of Vauxhalls converted at the plant range from panda cars and motorway-prowling traffic officer transport to ambulances and fire service vehicles, plus more specialist applications, including riotcontrol and bomb-disposal units.
Despite Peugeot-citroen’s holding group, PSA, buying General Motors’ European businesses, a spokesperson from Vauxhall told CM that “it is very much business as usual”.
Converting the standard
Dick Ellam, the Special Vehicle Department’s manager, says that many people think that Blue Light vehicles are modified mechanically, but this is not the case. The need to comply with Whole Vehicle Type Approval requirements, as well as warranty, emissions, cost and reliability considerations, is why standardtune engines and gearboxes are used. For emergency service use, for example, high performance is desirable, but reliability is even more critical. The conversion centre, therefore, focuses on fitting bespoke equipment, as well as carryingout interior and exterior upgrades after the vehicle has left the assembly line.
Certain added features – such as strobe and ‘hidden’ lights – have to integrate fully with the standard vehicles’ Canbus wiring hardware and must be tested to ensure that they don’t cause any glitches. As each vehicle is factory-fresh, all of its spare parts are linked to the unique Vehicle Identification Number. Some parts are also coded to a particular car and must not be interchanged. So, if a component is removed, it must be refitted to a specific vehicle and not another.
A walk around the factory floor reveals the conversion processes to be surprisingly labour-intensive, with interior panels, lamps and bumpers being removed, modified and refitted by hand. It is a specialist job, yet, by the very nature of their professions, all technicians have to be Home Officeaccredited, especially as certain expensive pre-used police equipment may be removed from a de-fleeted vehicle and delivered to Vauxhall so that it can be refitted into the new one.
This service reduces the cost of changing the vehicle, ensuring better value for the taxpayer. An interesting observation is that the unused factoryfitted tyres are removed from the converted vehicles and replaced with fitments from the Home Office’s preferential supplier.
Also supporting central government’s value remit is the need to retain as much residual value as possible when the time comes to sell the vehicle on. So, most official conversions are reversible, meaning that a member of the public can buy a former Home Office vehicle without unsightly screw holes and gaping chasms being left in the passenger compartment trim, for example.
To achieve this, Vauxhall in Luton commissions special parts to be made, such as complete fascia panels, and 90% of them are sourced from UK suppliers. In most cases, they’re specially-designed, bolt-on replacements for the original part: not only do they fit perfectly and carry an official Vauxhall part number, they’re also covered by the maker’s warranty schemes and are subject to vigorous quality-control testing.
For example, the factory fits secure holding cells into the rear load decks of Vivaro vans; these units must be crashtested at 30mph, so that occupants are protected to at least the same level as they would be had they been travelling in an unmodified vehicle. Additionally, the cells must be designed so that anybody locked inside cannot inflict an injury to either themselves, an attendant police officer or a fellow prisoner. Two secure entrance/exit points must be provided within the cell, so that every occupant can exit the vehicle swiftly and safely in an emergency. All of this helps police officers to meet their duty of care obligations.
Come de-fleeting time, Vauxhall can remove those parts, refit civilianspecification trim and remarket the used vehicle in an undamaged state to ensure the best return for its client.
The challenge of policing
For Vauxhall, supplying police forces throughout the country is an obvious speciality, backed-up by its 70% market share. The vehicles used by emergency services and converted by the Blue Light factory encompass the entire model range and not just those assembled in the UK. Corsa, Insignia and Mokka cars, as well as Combo and Movano commercial vehicles, join Astras and Vivaro vans at Luton’s specialist vehicle operation.
With policing techniques evolving rapidly over the past few years to tackle forms of e-crime and terror threats, vehicles have to include 4G Wi-fi and in-built tablets to keep officers connected on the move, as well as a host of other paraphernalia to thwart the criminal fraternity and serve the public. Such requirements vary considerably, but the production facility has been set up to be flexible enough to cope with the very differing demands from the various forces around the UK.
90% of specialist parts come from UK suppliers