The British Vette: 1966 Vauxhall XVR Concept

Vauxhall has been closely working with American automotive group General motors for years with developing new models and bringing new technology to the public. This partnership spanned a period of almost 90 years before GM decided to sell Vauxhall, along with its sister company Opel onto French Automotive group PSA Peugeot-Citroen. Over the time Vauxhall were a part of General Motors, some concepts were produced. Today I will be showing one of these concepts produced under their partnership with GM.
The 1966 Vauxhall XVR…

Conception

GM design director Wayne Cherry was given just 5 months to design a concept vehicle that would improve the marques sporting image to the general public. A man by the name of David Jones was called in to style it. What resulted from this was a sleek fastback sportscar taking design cues from the then-current Chevrolet Corvette C2 that was being produced by GM at the time of the XVR’s conception. It was only forty inches high which was the same as the Ford GT40 MK2 which raced at Le Mans the very same year. The showcar for Geneva was finished in British racing green and constructed using steel, besides that 2 other prototypes were produced, both constructed from fibreglass. The steel Geneva show car was also shown to press at the Vauxhall Test track.

Quirks,Features and Performance (QFP)

The XVR is surprisingly quirky with many illustrious features,the most recognisable feature being the large gullwing doors. The headlights are also quite interesting because instead of popping up in your traditional way, they came up by rotating transversely much like the Opel GT of the same era. The large windscreen wrapped around the front of the car and was integrated into the doors. Despite the Corvette esque look of the XVR, it did not have the performance to really back it up. The Concept was powered by a 1.6L inline-four which produced 71bhp (52.9kWh) featuring twin carburetors. A 4 Speed manual transmission was used to put that power through the wheels.

Fate

After the original Geneva showcar was presented to the public, Vauxhall decided that the best thing to do would be to destroy this beautiful car. In the end, only the Geneva show car was destroyed and that was the only functioning example. Both Fibreglass cars were kept, however since then Vauxhall has only been able to find one that was hidden in the roof of the Vauxhall design studio. The one remaining fibreglass car was finished in orange.

Conclusion

The Vauxhall XVR was in the end a collaboration with their longterm partner General Motors and it certainly did the marque justice, upping its sporting image considerably after being recieved positively by the public. Sadly only one of these remains and it does not function. I hope Vauxhall after producing concepts such as this with GM continue to make outlandish concepts with PSA after being sold to them in March of this year. So to all of those at Vauxhall, I wish you all good luck…

Anyway we have come to the end of this #Blogpost and I hope to see you in the next one!

Pokecraft The Car Catcher
Lover of Anime and Cars alike