Traditionally, histories of motor car firms have often been analyzed in “splendid isolation” as authors have tended to focus on car models, business practices, and personnel within the company at the expense of any meaningful contextualization. From the start Len Holden makes a conscious effort to place Vauxhall's development firmly within context of the local, national, and, at times, global economy. Furthermore, he also engages with the various historiographical debates that have touched upon the motor industry since the 1970s.

The book is organized in two sections. The first part consumes over three quarters of the book and is devoted to Holden's central area of expertise: the growth of Vauxhall and the surrounding region to 1950. The material here is based on detailed and carefully researched primary sources that shed light on the Vauxhall's growth from a small marine engine producing firm to one of the “Big Six” car manufacturers in Britain during the 1930s. Like David Thoms and Tom Donnelly, who carried out a similar analysis of car manufacturers in Coventry (The Coventry Motor Industry: From Birth to Renaissance? [Brookfield, UK, 2000]), Holden focuses upon production practices and industrial relations to convey the changing fortunes of Vauxhall. Holden presents some of his most compelling arguments in this first section. He convincingly argues that without General Motors, Vauxhall would have petered out like so many other car manufacturers in the 1920s. Significantly, however, Holden argues that the Americans adopted a low profile in their British base due to General Motors’ decentralized management philosophy and partly in response to the economic nationalism advocated by British entrepreneurs such as William Morris. Indeed, the placement of British managers in key positions helped Vauxhall adapt to local labor, productivity, and market demands, which Ford's inflexibility was unable to achieve in the early 1930s.

According to Holden, General Motors’ key appointment during the interwar period was the British-born Charles Bartlett, who has been characterized as presiding over Vauxhall's “golden era.” While he acknowledges that Bartlett's regime coincided with fortuitous labor and manufacturing conditions, Holden devotes a whole chapter to Bartlett's unconventional business and industrial relations practices. However, while there is no doubting Bartlett's impact on Vauxhall, his rather maverick approach was perhaps not as unique as Holden implies. The British motor industry was littered with “amateur” managers who often exhibited fine technical abilities but poor market awareness over a sustained period. In Captain John Black of Standard Motors, there were striking comparisons that suggest that the unique circumstances of weak union power and the push toward mass production enabled managing directors to impose their personalities on to the daily running of the firm during the interwar period. Both men came from military backgrounds, which colored their view of industrial relations; both implemented paternalistic social and sporting initiatives; both clashed with their local employers’ associations; and, highly significantly, both implemented “responsible autonomy” schemes in which workers were encouraged to earn generous bonuses for increased production. Indeed, it is perhaps also no coincidence that Bartlett and Black left their positions in 1953 and 1954, respectively, as the British car industry entered a new and more aggressively unionized era.

Throughout the book Holden is keen to import a strong historiographical dimension that enables the reader to assess Vauxhall's wider relevance to the development of the British motor industry. He convincingly challenges Wayne Lewchuk's thesis that Vauxhall adopted Fordist mass production techniques by the 1920s (American Technology and the British Vehicle Industry [Cambridge, 1987]), contending that it was only finally adopted decades later. Instead, Vauxhall settled for a batch-producing system and manufactured larger higher-priced models than the mass-produced smaller models favored by Morris and Austin. He also reopens the debate on the influence of migrant labor on the unionization of the labor force. Luton's relative geographical isolation from the engineering strongholds of Coventry and Birmingham enabled Vauxhall to recruit labor from a rural and weakly unionized labor force. Moreover, in challenging Johnathan Zeitlin's view that migrant labor boosted unionization (“The Emergence of Shop Steward Organisation and Job Control in the British Car Industry: A Review Essay,” History Workshop Journal 10 [Autumn 1980]), Holden supports Dave Lyddon (“Workplace Organisation in the British Car Industry: A Critique of Johnathan Zeitlin, History Workshop Journal 15 [Spring 1983]), arguing that immigration had little impact on workplace representation in Vauxhall during the 1930s. Instead, it was the shortage of labor during the war that provided the real impetus for unionization.

The second section of the book surveys Vauxhall and Luton from 1950 to 2002 and draws from well-known secondary source material. Part 2 does stand in stark contrast with the more thoroughly researched earlier section, and it is a little disappointing that key themes such as unionization are not carried through into the later chronology in any great detail. In effect, this short section provides the context to the decline of Vauxhall in Luton and the decision to end car production at the site in 2002. Holden notes that it was the turbulent industrial relations of the 1970s that led General Motors to adopt a more “hands on” approach to Vauxhall and, in the process, to limit investment in Britain. In this vicious circle, Luton's aging plant was soon marked out as the weakest of General Motors’ twelve car factories in Europe. By the 1990s, Holden concludes that Vauxhall's ailing market share was due to their inability to compete with the more attractive designs of European manufacturers such as Peugeot, Citroen, and Volkswagen.

In writing this book Holden achieves the most difficult task of appealing both to car enthusiasts and academics. The first section in particular is carefully researched and convincingly argued, drawing from a wide range of primary sources. Indeed, this book is a long-awaited and valuable contribution to the historiography of Britain's motor industry.