Five Classic Trials
Vauxhall PC Viscount
The name ‘PC Viscount’ might sound like it belongs to some prim and proper character who’s just escaped from an episode of Dixon of Dock Green, but this big, burly cruiser actually has something of a mischievous streak.
It has nothing to do with the way it looks, even though this slab-sided slice of Luton heritage does have the muscular, slightly angry look of a nightclub bouncer with a headache. The Viscount – and its lowlier Cresta cousin, of course – might have long eschewed their predecessors’ fins and chrome, but there’s still something very Stateside about their proportions and detailing. Witness Vauxhall Heritage’s beautifully maintained 1970 car’s whitewall tyres, cheesegrater grille and the vinyl enveloping its low-slung roof. Even the way the bodywork kinks upward as it swoops across the rear could have been lifted from a mid- Sixties Buick Electra. That same vibe continues when you clamber into the Viscount’s vast cabin and slam the chunky driver’s door behind you. The enormous pews up front offer precious little lateral support, but their mattress-like springiness actively encourages you to stretch out. You can’t help wondering, in fact, whether Luton’s engineers actually considered them to be an active part of the car’s suspension. You’re surrounded by the sort of wood veneer that wouldn’t look out of place on a yacht. It stretches the entire width of the dashboard before meeting two more slabs on each of the door cards. It’s a similar story behind you, where the rear accommodation is provided by a hefty settee of a rear bench smothered in sumptuous black leather.
Fire the 3.3-litre ‘six’ into life and the Viscount’s gentle baritone rumble brings its caddish character to the fore. The GM-sourced Powerglide transmission has just two ratios, but Luton seems to have engineered the engine so that it delivers virtually all of its considerable torque pretty much the instant you engage first gear.
The result ought to be an easygoing, lumbering mini-limo, but this big bruiser actually feels like a bit of a hot rod. It’ll dicreetly discharge its duties about town if you treat it gently and keep its ample torque at bay – but press the accelerator pedal into the footwell and it catapults you forward with unexpected urgency. The Viscount is about on a par with most of its late Sixties rivals when it comes to outright oomph, but Vauxhall made plenty of noise about the fact that its luxurious four-door could outsprint a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow to 50mph.
Pull away from a junction or exit a tight corner too energetically and there’s a squeal as the rear tyres momentarily lose grip and an excitable twitch as the car struggles to contain all the shove that it’s dumped through the transmission, seemingly in a single, oversized lump. The result is a big saloon that’s remarkably adept at overtaking and particularly well-endowed when it comes to low speed getaways; you’ll never tire of the way it thunders away from traffic lights.
It’s no slouch, then, but emphatically not a sports saloon. The power-assisted steering is effortlessly light and gives you plenty of time to correct things if your heavy right foot puts the Viscount seriously out of shape, but Vauxhall set it up for outside lane cruising, not midcorner involvement and immediate feedback. The same goes for the suspension, which seems to have been engineered for exactly the same amount of soft springiness you get from the seats. The resultant waterbed ride will lull you up and down endless motorways for hours on end, but try chucking it at a Welsh mountain road and it would go all to pieces.
Learning that the Viscount is no finelyhoned driver’s machine probably comes as no surprise, but discovering that this big, sumptuous saloon has a deliciously naughty side to it means that it’s impossible not to fall in love with it.