In 1958 the British Vanwall F1 team won the first World Constructors Championship Trophy. The company's founder, industrialist Tony Vandervell, had a clear ambition. he wanted to create the finest Grand Prix race team and win. He was especially focused on beating Ferrari whose red cars so often ruled the circuits of Europe.
The industrialist lent his considerable resources to creating the finest cars and hiring the best drivers. A key component was his love of engineering innovation. The Vanwall team name was created from the fusion of Vandervell and Thinwall, the globally renowned bearings business that supplied top teams like Ferrari.
Vanwall was a very special team. On the track their leader was Sir Stirling Moss, off it were team owner Tony Vandervell and manager David Yorke. In its day, Vanwall was a byword in the paddock for innovative engineering, with the Colin Chapman-designed chassis complementing the aerodynamics by Frank Costin.
Ten years perseverance went into 1958 and beating ‘those bloody red cars’. It was Britain vs Italy, Vanwall vs Ferrari, Green vs Red. The green cars won.
To celebrate the Vanwall victory and what it has meant to Britain's F1 teams we are building just six Vanwalls, Only five of the continuation cars will be offered for private sale, with the sixth car forming the core of a Vanwall Historic Racing Team. Each vehicle will be painstakingly built over thousands of hours by historic racing and vehicle restoration experts, Hall and Hall in Lincolnshire, England.
Current MD of Vanwall Group Iain Sanderson is a former world champion offshore powerboat racer, as well as being an early pioneer in electric vehicles, when he commissioned the Lightning GT electric supercar in 2008.
Established in 1903, Vauxhall is the only volume manufacturer continuously building vehicles in the UK for over 100 years. Their Ellesmere Port plant, in Cheshire, produces the sixth generation Astra 5-door hatchback and is the sole manufacturer in Europe of the Astra Sports Tourer. The plant has a headcount of 2,100 and the capacity to produce 187,000 units a year on three shifts. In 2007, Ellesmere Port became the first UK manufacturer to receive the Energy Efficiency Accreditation and in 2010 became the first European manufacturing plant to achieve the Wildlife Habitat Accreditation.
In May 2012, GM announced that it would build the next generation Astra in the UK, safeguarding the Ellesmere Port plant until at least the end of the decade. Then in November 2017, the PSA Group completed its purchase of the Vauxhall and Opel brands from GM. The latest generation Astra Hatchback and Sports Tourer remain in production at Ellesmere Port.
Vauxhall also build the 'medium-sized' van, the Vivaro, at their plant in Luton, for sale in the UK and Europe.
The Venari Group is the UK's leading manufacturer of emergency vehicles, with over 124,000 sq ft of manufacturing space accross 2 Yorkshire-based sites, employing over 120 people.
The Group encapsulates two main world-class specialist divisions: their ambulance production division, under the ‘O&H Vehicle Technology’ brand, based in Goole, East Yorkshire, is the UK’s oldest and largest ambulance factory comfortably boasting the UK’s most experienced team of ambulance builders.
Venari’s firefighting division, based at their headquarters in Brighouse, West Yorkshire, is the largest firefighting vehicle factory in England which also boasts some of the industry’s most experienced firefighting vehicle builders together with the next generation of mechanical and electrical production and design engineers.
In 2022 they built and supplied over 1,000 vehicles, and towards the end of 2022 their two sites became three when the new factory on the Ford Dagenham site was commissioned.
