A company that built steam engines for the British Navy and river pleasure boats turned its attention to the new internal combustion engine and renamed itself as "The Vauxhall Ironworks".
In 1903 it began to develop its first motor car, moving to new premises at Luton in 1905 after which an underpowered 7/9 bhp 1,300 cc three-cylinder car went out of production almost at its birth.
But for the 1906 London Motor Show there was a number of new models, including the 18 bhp car that first showed the bonnet flutes that were to be a feature of the brand right up to 1959. In 1907, the name Vauxhall Motors was introduced.
The Vauxhall name gained a reputation in record-breaking at the famous Brooklands track in 1909, and again in 1910 when it became the first car in the world in its class to exceed 100 mph.
The reliability of the Vauxhall engineering was established in 1910 when a three-car team completed the Tour of Prussia.
In 1913 a special 4.25-litre based on the original Prince Henry (pictured) set a record hill-climb that was to endure for 15 years.
In the 1920s, Vauxhall became a brand that symbolised modest prices, and with fewer successes in that period the company was sold to General Motors in 1925 for $2.5 million, becoming GM's first manufacturing base in Europe.
By 1933, 40 per cent of all 14 bhp car registrations in Britain were Vauxhalls, due to the Light Six model which sold for a very affordable price. In 1937, a review in The Motor magazine enthused about the new Vauxhall Ten that "exceeds 42 miles per gallon".
War came again and Vauxhall was called on to design a new tank. The result was the Churchill tank, built to more than 5,600 copies, some 3,000 of which were returned to Luton for battle repairs.
After the war, names that were to bring the brand through to the 1950s were produced, including the Wyvern and Velox.
In 1957, the Wyvern was replaced by the Victor, a poor copy of a US Chevrolet. It nearly killed Vauxhall, being the wrong shape and prone to rust. But the Victor 101 of 1964 revived the model and Vauxhall's fortunes, with one of the best cars in its class at the time.Subsequent memorable Vauxhalls included the hippy-time version of the Velox, the Ventora, and going back to its roots, the Viva small car.
There were special variants of the different models produced in the 1960s that had Vauxhall at the top levels of the kind of motoring that was later to become the business of the "hot hatch" brigade.
But 1975 saw the beginning of the end of Vauxhall as an independent manufacturer, with the arrival of the first Cavalier, and then the first hatchback that was the Vauxhall Chevette, all getting very close to its Opel equivalent. Engines were still Vauxhall, though, and with only four-speed gearboxes when the Opel versions were already five-speed. From the beginning of the 1980s, Vauxhalls became totally Opels, just with a different grille. Vivas were replaced by Astras. Cavalier eventually became Vectra. Today there's no difference, except the "V" grille.
Best Car: Victor VX 4/90 of 1965.
Worst Car: 1957 Victor.
Weirdest Car: 1957 Victor (really... a tall and thin Chevy Bel Air pastiche ... with a 1.5-litre engine?)