Talk:Vauxhall Motors/Archives/2013

Company history vs. car model history

I was looking for information when the Vauxhall brand was replaced by Opel in South Africa, and I found an hint to the respect hidden in the sub-section "Relationship with other GM products" of the chapter "Products", but not the chapter "History". But South Africa was not even mentioned, only that "the Vauxhall brand was dropped by GM in Ireland in favour of Opel in 1982, with other right hand drive markets like Malta and Cyprus soon following suit." I have introduced an item in the section "Timeline" of chapter "History" mentioning that important change for the brand. I had found in a brochure by GM South Africa on its history this: "1926 - GMSA started assembling vehicles in 1926, producing brands such as Chevrolet, Oakland, GMC trucks, Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Vauxhall". Having produced and marketed Vauxhall in South Africa being a result of SA having been a British colony. But today, GMSA markets only Chevrolet, Opel and Isuzu vehicles.

It would be worthwhile to restructure the article giving the actual company or brand history more weight instead of only recounting the car models produced under the Vauxhall brand.
--L.Willms (talk) 06:22, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

There already is an entry for General Motors South Africa. There are already some brief mentions of SA in some of the individual Opel Rekord articles, and probably elsewhere. But GM in RSA a subject on which I know shamefully little and the existing wiki-entry cries out to be fleshed out. If you're the man (or woman? - no, probably not) to fill it with more useful and interesting information, and you have the available time and information to hand, please do it. Success Charles01 (talk) 09:30, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, yes, but I was voicing a suggestion for the improvement of this Vauxhall article. The task ahead is to transform it from an article by car enthusiasts for car enthusiasts into a serious encyclopedic article about the brand and company Vauxhall motors. --L.Willms (talk) 21:51, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. "Let's restructure the entry" is a slightly more difficult issue. The entry could certainly benefit from further close work. But you need to have regard to the other people who will be most likely (1) to read and (2) to contribute to the entry. In my judgement the entry already has a somewhat inconsistent structure because each of the (say) twenty significant contributors has a different set of unspoken and largely unquestioned assumptions about the structure of the entry. The most coherently structured wiki entries tend to have relatively few contributors (but also relatively few readers). For better or worse, most folks looking up "Vauxhall" (cars) in wikipedia have never even been to South Africa. I suspect (though I cannot prove) that most of them will be from the UK, albeit with significant but much smaller numbers from Australia, Canada and, yes, RSA not to forget, of course, continental Europe. Feel free to improve the structure of the Vauxhall entry. If you have more specific ideas for changes which you think might be contentious, spell them out on the talk page first to see how people react. But be aware of the risk that if your improvements to the structure find very little resonance with other readers/contributors, then the net result will be more structural confusion in the overall entry which isn't really in anyone's interest. So yes, share your more specific ideas, and yes contribute your own improvements. The Vauxhall entry would certainly benefit from more information on Vauxhall cars assembled and/or sold in RSA (and in Canada, Switzerland, Australia....). But if you find my reservations here make sense, please proceed with a little caution. It MIGHT still be the case that improving the GM South Africa entry is a more urgent priority. Regards Charles01 (talk) 08:25, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

No, the issue is not South Africa or any other country which had been a colony of England, but that the actual company history of Vauxhall is hidden behind a list of objects for car enthusiasts. There is also no talk about the technical development center, which Vauxhall once had to develop its specific Vauxhall cars which were differnt from the Rüsselsheim developed Opel cars. Where was it located? How many people have been employed when? When was it closed for good? Or does it continue as a technical center for light commercial vehicles (the Movano being manufactured in the Luton factory). Many important facts are missing concerning the company history from the takeover by GM in 1925 to the reduction of Vauxhall to a sub-brand of Opel for the UK. Car enthusiasts describe the Vauxhall branded cars they have heard of, but one does not learn much about the company which had produced them. --L.Willms (talk) 22:50, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree with a number of the comments above. I have long thought an "Operations" section needed, which would detail things like manufacturing and R&D facilities. I agree that there is also insufficient information on the history of the company as opposed to just its products (although the two are closely linked). I wouldn't favour splitting the two but would like to see more company history added to the history section. There is also overlap in the section, and in my view the whole Timeline should be merged into the prose of the History section and duplication removed. The article is also in need of far more citations. Rangoon11 (talk) 23:21, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Images of 30-98 and Cadet

30-98 Velox

Sensibly priced Cadet by General Motors

The 30-98 was a successful Vauxhall product in the 1920s which became a cult-car. It was, like all Vauxhalls at that time, relatively expensive - say like a Jaguar today. The next image (which to all but a car buff shows the same vehicle with a front bumper) is of the very first real GM product from Vauxhall for which the charge was about 1/3 of the price of the older car. I think we need to show the two images together to demonstrate how GM grafted a common or garden or cooking type car onto the Vauxhall upmarket reputation. That is why I put the two there - why do we have a tank? All tanks look the same, like tanks.

The paragraph of the article headed 1925 to 1939 says "The company's image and target market were quickly changed, marked particularly by the introduction in 1931 of the first Bedford truck, which was Chevrolet based, along with the low-cost two-litre Vauxhall Cadet."
Hmmm. Is five full years before a new product a quick change? I do not think so. Look in Wikimedia Commons under 14-40 20-60 80 to see the pure local-design Vauxhalls GM simply left in production with very small upgrades—for another five years and (80) more.
Was not the Cadet car rather more important to Vauxhall and us than the Bedford truck?
I think so.
I am trying to say politely that Charles Bulmer, who I once read regularly for many years, is not in this case a reliable witness (if accurately reported then he is using GM truck PR fluff) or is the obvious to be regarded as original research? As with too much of WP mistaken ideas with citations to poor sources seem to me to be rife in this article.

While I'm here the quite special to enthusiasts naming of old Vauxhalls as A-type E-type etc should not be completely tossed out (for their sake) but left only to support the then conventional names like 20 hp, 14-40 and 30-98 and 23-60 etc etc etc.

I look forward to seeing a revision of this article as discussed by others above when I too will be able to sit on the sidelines and er, . . . comment. In anticipation, Eddaido (talk) 02:25, 21 March 2013 (UTC)