Here’s one for you British vehicle fans, a 1975 Vauxhall Viva E. It’s in lovely Snaith, United Kingdom, about 30 miles east of Leeds. It can be found on eBay as a classified ad with a price of £2,885 ($3,822). What a great looking car!
This car looks perfect upon first glance, but in looking at the shiny finish, it appears to have a bit of wrinkling / waving, so I’m guessing that there may be some bodywork going on underneath that beautiful white paint. I could be wrong, let me know if you think the same thing about bodywork. This car checks a lot of boxes for me: small, unusual, two-door, 4-speed; but it has one unchecked box being that it’s, of course, right hand drive. I know, it just takes some getting used to driving a right-hand-drive vehicle and it seems to work for several hundred million people around the world so it can’t be all bad!
The Vauxhall Viva was made from 1963 to 1979 and this is a third-generation car, or an “HC” Viva made from 1970 to 1979. This last generation would be the last that was designed by Vauxhall as after 1979 they because rebadged Opels. It sounds like what happened to Saturn, unfortunately. This car has almost 94,000 miles on it and it has to have been “restored”, or at least dolled up recently, it looks far too good to me, if that makes any sense what so ever. Especially given the low price, or what I think is a low price for such a great looking car. The front end design is killer on this era of Viva, in my opinion!
The interior looks like new, at least from this one photo. The seats had to have been reupholstered, again, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just surprised at how nice this car looks for the asking price. Here’s a small photo that shows the dash layout, including what looks like a grouping of gauges added onto the left side. The trunk/boot looks great, albeit with a bit of a rattle-can-restoration in there. At least it isn’t rusty for the most part. I believe that this car is the “E” (economy) model, as opposed to the L or SL because in 1975 it was the only Viva to have the strip-speedometer instead of the round dials of the L and SL models.
This is a 1.3L inline-four with 58 hp! Zinnng! I bet that there’s some rust lurking under the skin of this little beauty, but hopefully it isn’t so much that it’ll be a nightmare for anyone looking for one of these. Have you seen a Vauxhall Viva before? What do you think about this one, is it a good buy?
Ended…
That’s not a Viva E; they were left-over Firenza shells so had a slanty-ended bootlid and were at the tail-end of Viva production. 1979/80, I think. D.
The Viva E was a coupe,using surplus shells from the HPF project
They were all on P plates and came in Gold,White or Blue
Hey even Elvis Costello acknowledged the great Viva
I’ve been a bad boy with the standard leader.
My neighbor’s revving up his Vauxhall Viva.
The Beat
As derek says not a Viva E pic is viva e
Oh men, we used to have those in Canada, we even had à Viva GT, GM tought that exporting them would beat the Japaneze to there own game. Wrong! 😀
There are many British cars which were never any good during my (British) childhood, when they were new or current models, but which magically become desireable when they cross the Atlantic. This Vauxhall is not one of them.
For our US readers, this is a close cousin of the Chevette. I remember many of these that had stick shift transmissions being flat-bedded in to the dealership with a “no gears selectable” complaint. Then we would often find the gear shift level lying on the floor beside the console because it had pulled completely out of the transmission.
Yessiree. GM “engineering” at its finest.
Nice survivor — but I wonder why anybody would want to help one of these survive.
” Nice survivor — but I wonder why anybody would want to help one of these survive.” Precisely.
Speaking of parts that come off, I owned, and drove a Fiat, a Lancia and two Alfas in succession. My mechanic was Giovanni DiFatta. A typical conversation went like this: “Hey, Johnny, it’s Tony. You know my Alfa that you worked on last week?” “Yes, Tony. What’s up?” “Well, I was driving on the freeway doing about seventy, when the steering wheel came off in my hand.” “O.K. How may miles you got?” “About fifty-five thousand.” “O.K. Don’ worry about it. Is O.K. Is normal.”
I come here to read the comments. They are far more interesting than the vehicle’s themselves.
No-one re-upholsters stock Vivas in the UK, interior is original for sure. The Viva wasn´t a bad car (British Leyland was major competitor).
Viva GT and 2.3 Firenza/Magnums were fast cars, competitive in race/rally (google Gerry Marshall).
Price is what you´ll get for this one, nothing special.
I had a four door 1975 S version, metallic green with a black vinyl roof. I learned to drive in it and passed my test in 1987 in it. 2 of my mates also did the same with their Vivas. Great cars and really enjoyed its floaty suspension and styling and had it for 3 years. Unfortunately like all British 70’s cars, it really rusted………
We call it a ferenza chevrolette or the v8 is a chevy can-am
its the South African muscle car in 70’s-80’s
Like to find Epic Gt (Canadian vauxhall) any suggestions?