In many respects it was a miracle that this car made it to the production line at all. GM Europe was suffering financially and GM North America was operating at a loss.
A lot of people know that the VX220 was designed in tandem with the Lotus Elise S2 but they might not realise that it was Lotus who approached GM on the project in order to gather sufficient funding to move forward with a new Elise design. Lotus manufactured the VX220 in their plant granting 1/3 of the production space to the Vauxhall model. Initially Vauxhall released a 2.2 litre N/A version which at 147 hp was more powerful than the S2 Elise. They then followed it up with a 2.0 litre Z20LET turbo model which made 200 hp.
All told there were just shy of 5,300 2.2 VX220’s manufactured and just under 2,000 turbo models manufactured. Vauxhall actually produced 65 off track orientated VX220’s badged as the VXR220 producing 220 hp equipped with bigger brakes and performance style seats, available only in Calypso Red.
Many VX220s were supplied to the European market in LHD (having been manufactured exclusively in the UK) and marketed as the Opel Speedster. This means that there are just over 500 2.2 models on the road in the UK and just over 400 turbo examples left.
Again this is another car that was on the bucket list along with the Opel GT. Interestingly, Opel indulged in a 34 year hiatus, between 1973 and 2006, when manufacturing the new Opel GT (hideous and not a patch on the original), which means that the VX220 was the first 2 seater sports car to be made by Vauxhall/Opel since the 1968-73 production run of the GT.
Owning this car had long been a dream but prices were starting the head in the upwards direction, E having watched them for years, and it became clear that if we didn’t act now, we would always be chasing them. The dilemma had raged for a long time about whether to buy a 2.2 N/A as the cheaper option and look to supercharge it in the future, or whether to fork out for the turbo.
Colour was also important. Neither of us are fans of yellow, Vauxhall’s attempts at the colour red are a laughing stock across the market with ‘Flame Red’ having a tendency to descend to ‘Flame Pink’ within a matter of years. Silver remains a dull choice, blue seemed like a good option along with black.
We drove to Wakefield to check this one out over a New Year… an excellent time to choose to buy a vehicle, garages are open every day, no one is working reduced hours, truly an excellent decision.
As you would expect, this one isn’t perfect and it was one of the lowest priced turbo options for sale at the time. But we don’t do perfect; perfect comes with guilt over adding miles, stone chips, and generally causing wear and tear. This is a car for driving.
If you’re interested in the full and comprehensive history of the VX220, you can find it here.
This car will have a project build page which will be updated as its evolution gets under way.
Turbochatter 