MY OTHER CAR'S A VAUXHALL!
WE RECENTLY ASKED WHETHER YOU REALLY LOVED VAUXHALL, AND HUGE NUMBERS SAID YES. WHEN WE ASKED HOW MANY YOU HAVE OWNED, CHRIS HUMPHRIES WAS AMONG THOSE WHO RESPONDED - WITH AN AMAZING STORY.
Words by Brian Laban
Pictures by Nick Dawe
‘I was very interested to read your article in the Vauxhall magazine, ‘I Luv Vauxhall’. You were asking for ‘serial Vauxhall owners’ to contact you. I think I fit this description, as I have had 33 new Vauxhalls, and loving Vauxhalls from the past, I also have a collection of thirteen classic Vauxhalls, from 1962 to 1994. My son, another Vauxhall enthusiast, aged 23, has a further six classic Vauxhalls’.
That was the opening of the letter we received from Chris Humphries of Launceston, Cornwall – so it was pretty obvious that we had to go and meet him.
His faith in the brand is unswerving. ‘I have never owned anything other than Vauxhalls. I have looked at other makes and have had experience of other marques through friends’ cars, but I have never found that they compare with Vauxhall for performance, build-quality, refinement, and reliability. Moreover, Vauxhall’s after-care takes some beating. I have never had any problems with warranty work, unlike some other makers who query claims or seek to fit second-hand parts…’
And this long-running love affair started when Chris’s father was the one doing the car buying. ‘I wasn’t always a Vauxhall fan’, Chris admits now. ‘In the 1950s and early 60s, when I was a child, my father had Fords. And in 1961 he was aiming to have the then all-new Consul Classic 315. That was until September, when the new FB Victor was announced. Just after its launch, Dad went into one of the Exeter Vauxhall dealers and mentioned that he had wanted a Consul Classic before he had seen the Victor, and the salesman told him that, so far that week, they had had five or six customers who had actually cancelled orders for Classics and ordered Victors instead!’
But even now, it wasn’t quite love at first sight: ‘I had mixed feelings when Dad took delivery of his new Victor in February 1962’, Chris admits. ‘But I soon had to admit that it was vastly superior to the Ford in every way. And after 40,000 miles (during which I learned to drive and passed my test in the car) Dad traded it in for a new model, in Cactus Green’.
The die was cast. ‘First we had a demonstration in a new Cortina, which finally killed off any feelings I had left for Ford. Dad was to lapse only once after that, when after 45,000 miles with the new Victor he bought a nearly-new BMW 1800, as he didn’t like the style of Vauxhall’s 101. But the ‘Beemer’, while fast and sporty, was very unreliable and it began to rust quite spectacularly while it was less than three years old. Dad went back to Vauxhall and had nothing else for the rest of his life – two FD Victors, a Viva 1800SL (two months before it was officially launched!), a Viva 1300SL, Cavalier 1600GL,and finally a Mk I Astra 1300S’.
