TAKING THE POSTWAR FAMILY DREAM CAR FOR A SPIN – 70 YEARS ON
Families buying ingredients to cook the newly-invented Coronation chicken in 1953 might have travelled to the shops in this car.
The L-Type saloon was the crowning glory of Vauxhall’s post-war line-up of new models, after building tanks and trucks for the duration of the conflict.
The car in our photographs is the 1,442cc Wyvern, a four-cylinder machine manufactured in Luton and priced from a relatively modest £479.
Together with the larger-engined Velox version, more than 131,000 affordable L-Types were built between 1948 and 1951 as the country slowly recovered after the Second World War.
Peace and stability didn’t ease food shortages or the economic challenge – a motor car was seen as a luxury when Queen Elizabeth II took the throne, with only one in 20 people owning a vehicle. However, there was much excitement when the London Motor Show was held at Earls Court, in October 1952.
Many models on display, such as the Ford Prefect, Standard Eight and Austin A40, were thrifty machines aimed at the man in the street, as well as the country’s booming export market. Of the 595,000 cars built in Britain in 1953, more than half were shipped abroad. Only 2,000 vehicles were imported – imagine that!
The British car industry was on a roll and while sports cars such as the Triumph TR2 and Austin-Healey 100 stole the limelight, family motors as exemplified by the Wyvern got Britain moving again. For what Vauxhall called the “pleasure motorist”, the car had a trusted chromed badge denoting Vauxhall’s griffin motif on the bonnet and represented great value for money – but what was it really like to drive?
Spring has blossomed in rural Oxfordshire, where an outbreak of squirrels risks their nuts by crossing the road without due care and attention. Or at least they would if I was travelling around the Blenheim Palace estate in a car fast enough to give them a fright.
The Wyvern was named after a mythical winged dragon, yet there’s not much fire about a saloon that lumbers from 0-50mph in 28 seconds. Flat out, presumably downhill with a following gust, the Vauxhall can manage 60mph.
This example was built in 1950 and shipped to sunny Portugal, which probably explains why it has survived this long. Rescued by a Dutch enthusiast, the Wyvern eventually found its way back to the Vauxhall Heritage Collection in Luton and now resides at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon in Warwickshire
To be fair, the Wyvern was never intended as a performance model. The six-cylinder Velox is more comfortable at speed but the L-Type offered some comforts, such as independent front suspension and a push-button petrol cap, as well as semaphore indicators that emerge from the door pillar to take the arm-work out of indicating.
Perched on a leather bench seat in the old-school “sit-up-and-beg” driving position, a waft of leather and wool carpet reminds me of my first car, a 1961 Morris Minor. Except this Wyvern was built even earlier, the same year a pilot episode of a new series called The Archers was broadcast on the BBC Home Service and Silverstone hosted its first Grand Prix.
In front of me are four chrome knobs marked V, L, S and C – ventilation, lights, starter and choke. There are amp and fuel gauges, a speedometer and not much else. For infotainment, Vauxhall offered an optional medium and long wave radio, with a chrome-plated telescopic aerial, also at extra cost. To tune in to “more distant stations”, the aerial could be extended manually by reaching a hand out of the window.
Safety belts weren’t invented until 1959 and even window winders are missing from the Wyvern – the sales brochure proudly proclaims the car has balanced, direct-lift windows, otherwise known as a chrome-plated finger pull fitted to the top centre of each panel of glass. The interior is austere in the extreme, so much so that a fetching, cut-glass ashtray looks supremely luxurious.
I’m not sure I qualify as a “pleasure motorist” because the Wyvern doesn’t prove easy to drive. Naturally, the three-speed, synchromesh gearbox with its operating lever on the steering column takes a little understanding, while the outsized steering wheel and narrow, radial tyres add to the car’s ponderous roadholding.
On Coronation Day, 2 June 1953, the weather was overcast with showers. Driving along the A4 to London to watch the procession – the English section of the M4 motorway from the Severn Bridge didn’t fully open until 1971 – would certainly have been memorable in the L-Type. At least this Wyvern has an optional heater, while Vauxhall was so confident in its build quality that an emergency starting handle wasn’t included.
Today, driving the modern equivalent in the Vauxhall range, a plug-in hybrid Astra, to buy the ingredients for a vegetarian Coronation quiche, would in theory return 256mpg. The Wyvern at best offered 30mpg, although petrol cost only the equivalent of 4.5p per litre. Road safety has dramatically improved, too; more than 4,700 people were killed in 1952 compared with under 2,000 today, despite an extra 30 million cars.
Yet, as economical, refined and comfortable as the latest Astra is, I somehow doubt in 70 years’ time we will fondly reminisce about a family hatchback with pixel headlights, panoramic parking cameras and an on-board computer the driver can talk to. The £700 metallic paint costs more than the Wyvern did when it was new.
The L-Type may not have been fit for a king but driving one today is a reminder of the remarkable reign of our late Queen. As a new monarch is crowned, the Wyvern highlights how far the motor car has progressed and what we have left behind, for better or worse.
2023-05-04T11:39:54Z dg43tfdfdgfd