The Vauxhall Motor Company has a very long tradition of making cars’ it was founded in London as long ago as 1857. In 1925, however, Vauxhall was purchased and became part of the giant American car group, General Motors, which was to influence its car design for many years to come.
During the war the factory at Luton in Bedfordshire made Churchill tanks but resumed vehicle production in 1946 when they began producing cars that would bear some of the most famous names in British motorised transport, the Victor, the Velox, the Wyvern and the Cresta.
This article is solely about the Vauxhall Cresta, a large and quite well equipped car that was aimed at the affluent middle classes and those with just a little more money in their pockets. However, it’s obvious American influence and overt styling meant that it attracted a different class of buyer from the more traditionally English Rover and Jaguar purchasers.
It’s very hard to get information on the wages that people were paid in the 1960s so that you can make meaningful comparisons between earnings and the prices of goods. 
Part 1
Introduction
Fiat produced a mass of models in the late 60s and 70s featuring cars of around one and half litre in a whole zoo of shapes, engine sizes and styles but of all of them, this may well have been the one to have!