Vauxhall’s greatest hits
Vauxhall builds... and what’s the most expensive?
01 Lotus Carlton
The standard Vauxhall Carlton would not make this list. When Lotus got hold of it, though, the straight-six was enlarged to 3.6-litres, twin turbos were fitted and a conservative top speed of 176mph was announced.
02 Vauxhall VX220
Another Vauxhall and Lotus love affair in the early Noughties led to this – the ultra-lightweight GM-engined sister to the Series 2 Elise. Oh, how we wish Vauxhall still made sports cars.
03 Vauxhall Astra GTE MkII 16v
The second-generation Vauxhall Astra was a revelation for Vauxhall, and when it fitted the GTE with its fantastic 150bhp 16v ‘redtop’ engine in 1988 it became a true hot hatch hero.
04 Vauxhall Nova GTE/GSi
Known to the rest of the world as the first-generation Opel Corsa, the Nova did a decent job of taking on the Fiesta and the Austin Metro in Eighties Britain. The fuel-injected GTE (which later became the GSi) was particularly popular with yoofs and crims.
05 Vauxhall Insignia VXR Sports Tourer
Anyone else forget these once existed? The facelifted SuperSport version of Vauxhall’s fast estate arrived in 2013 with all-wheel drive, shouty styling and a 321bhp 2.8-litre turbo V6. It also binned the previous generation’s limiter for a top speed of 170mph.
06 Vauxhall Monaro VXR
At the same time Vauxhall was selling the VX220 in the UK, it was also offering the gloriously brutish Monaro. Essentially this was a rebadged Holden, but it was also a two-door, rear-wheel-drive V8 coupe that loved to get sideways. We adored it.
07 Opel Manta 400
Group B rallying gave us a ridiculous crop of homologation special road cars, didn’t it? One of the best looking of the bunch has to be the Opel Manta 400. Just 245 were built and only 59 got the widebody Irmscher arches.
08 Vauxhall Calibra DTM
When it launched, the Calibra was the [pushes glasses up nose, engages adenoids] most aerodynamically efficient mass production car in the world. It had a drag coefficient of just 0.26. The DTM didn’t change that, but you did get lower suspension and white BBS wheels.
09 Baby Bertha
Meet Baby Bertha – a V8 Repco-Holden engined racer based loosely around a Vauxhall Firenza. Bill Blydenstein and his team designed Bertha for one thing only: to win the Super Saloon championship in the mid-Seventies. It did. Twice.
It’s a pretty snug range right now, beginning at £17,015 for a basic Corsa and topping out at a smidge under £50k for the new Vivaro Life electric people carrier.
That’s all very sensible, but of course until recently the delightful quirk in the Vauxhall range, thanks to the firm’s General Motors ownership, was a rear-drive V8 muscle car, latterly styled as the VXR8 saloon. This bruiser of a car was essentially an Australian-made Holden with some Griffin badges tacked on, making best use of the company parts bin.
It cost £75,000 – enough to seat 18 people if you spent it on a Vivaro and two Corsas – but it also had 600bhp, making it a bargain alongside the BMW M5 and Merc E63 its power output matched, and which have long since stormed into six figures if you so much as look at the options list.