Market Finance Time

Vauxhall cars in Britain will be rebranded under the Opel name in an effort to appeal to the Russian car market, according to the former managing director of Rover, Times Online reports.

Professor Kevin Morley, who is now director of business studies at the University of Warwick, said the involvement of Russian companies in the deal to save Opel and Vauxhall would lead to thousands of cars being imported into Russia under the Opel brand.

“No one in Russia knows what a Vauxhall is,” he told The Times. “I’m sure we’ll see Vauxhall the brand disappear soon after the deal. Vauxhalls in the UK will sell here as Opels.”
But actually there is a story told that when the Russians sent a delegation to London in the latter part of the 19th century to look at our railway system, the British Government, fearing that the Russians were simply spying on us, arranged for them to visit Vauxhall, saying that it was one of our mainline stations. The delegation returned to Russia and henceforth all Russian mainline stations (and others) were called Vokzál.