Why are opel cars called Vauxhall in England?
Vauxhall was an independent manufacturer, named after the area of the same name in London in 1857 where they first set up before moving production to Luton in Bedfordshire in 1905. In 1925, the company was purchased by GM of America to give it a foothold in the UK and ultimately Europe in order to compete with Ford. Opel was GMs German subsidiary and in the early 80s they directed an “Opelisation” of the Vauxhall brand which saw many models simply copied or imported. This was to save costs of development. This was also replicated with the Holden brand in Australia and New Zealand. The Vauxhall brand was dropped in Ireland (Eire) in 1982 and other countries such as Cyprus, Malta and New Zealand later in the same decade. It is generally accepted that the brand is too strong in the UK for GM to get rid of it in favour of Opel though the different model names were gradually dropped in favour of mainly Opel model names e.g. Vectra replaced Cavalier with the exception of Astra which replaced
