"A Viva at Whitsun"

Vauxhall Motors reply:

Sir,

It was pleasing to read your approving comments on the Viva that you sampled over Whitsun. In fairness to some thousands of British work-people, though, I would like to remove any false impressions your reference to “German quality” might have left.

While it is true that the Viva and the Opel Kadett share a number of basic design similarities, the Viva’s quality is wholly owed to the British people—working for Vauxhall and outside suppliers—who designed and make it. There is only one part in the Viva (the pressed-steel rocker) that is interchangeable with its counterpart in the Kadett. Every single other part was designed and developed for the Viva at Luton, and is made specifically for the Viva.

When one speaks of quality, therefore, and the durability and dependability which you praise, the credit must assuredly go to our own country, and not to Germany. Would you, incidentally, really class the performance of the Viva as “modest”? The actual example you tried (a fairly typical Viva, we believe) was shown in a road-test published by one of your highest-ranking contemporaries to out-accelerate all the cars with which they compared it; and you yourself said, after giving, in your full road-test, your figures for what you called the “splendid performance” of the Viva, “these really are outstanding figures, bettering those of all the well-known family saloons up to 1,200 c.c. . . .
Luton, Press Officer.
Derek Goatman

[Modest only in comparison with the Jaguar E-type, Aston Martin, Porsche, or whatever, that some people assume the Editor of a sporting motor journal habitually drives! And I am delighted to let Mr. Goatman make this point on behalf of British workpeople.—ED.]