Cohort contributor whatnext2010 has come across what must be a spectacularly rare street find with this Envoy Special. The Envoy marque was exclusive to Canada and it allowed Chevrolet-Buick dealerships to sell their own versions of the British Vauxhalls available at Pontiac dealers. This particular one is based off the 1964-1967 Vauxhall Victor 101 or FC series. The Envoy is visually differentiated by the use of the British market’s sporty VX4/90 trim (but not the performance equipment).
This generation of Envoy has a very low survival rate even among collectors of British oddball cars. Perhaps it is because the styling is very understated and certainly less dramatic than the previous F-series and FB designs. The British Columbia license plate gives a hint as to why it has survived in such fantastic condition. Western Canada and in particular southern areas of British Columbia have what is probably the best climate in Canada for preserving old cars.
Wow that’s a nice one.Vauxhalls from this period suffered badly from rust and survivors are rare.
I’m imagining an alternate universe in which these were more popular and thus more commonly found today. It’s not hard to imagine it.
Granted, I don’t know much about the history of this model but I get a Nova vibe from it.
That is an incredibly rare find. While the Vauxhall Viva and Envoy Epic were not uncommon, I don’t recall ever having seen one of these or the the next generation larger cars on the street. I can’t imagine GM was moving more that a few hundred of these a year, that any of them survived at all is remarkable.
Just by way of correction, the Canadian dealer structure was Pontiac-Buick-GMC and Chev-Olds.
The practice in Canada in those days was for each dealer network to have low-priced cars, mid-priced cars and trucks all under the same roof. That way, in areas of low population density where having a dealer from every network might not have been feasible, a dealer from any given network could cover the entire range reasonably well. In the two GM dealer networks, Chevrolet and Pontiac served the low-priced car role. Since Pontiac dealers need to have “Chevrolet-like” low-priced cars available, the cars that Pontiac sold in Canada before the 1970s (and even sometimes after that) were often more closely related to Chevrolets than to U.S. Pontiacs. When Pontiac had some success in the late ’50s in Canada with Vauxhalls, Canadian Chevrolet dealers argued that they needed to have Vauxhall products available, too, and the Envoy was born.
A question that I don’t know the answer to: How was Cadillac handled in Canada in those days?
Cadillac was sold in both Chev/Olds dealers and Pontiac/Buick/GMC dealers but not all of them…in metro Vancouver back in the 60’s I could only think of Carter P.B. & Cadillac and Dueck C.O. & Cadillac. Smaller towns up in the interior of British Columbia usually had a mix or all of the above except Cadillac and some still do to this day!
BTW Opel GT’s were sold in Canada.
Cadillacs were sold by whichever local dealer was able to convince GM that they should sell them.
Where I grew up, in Rouyn-Noranda Quebec, there was Noranda Garage, which sold Chevrolet and Oldsmobile, and there was Garage Thibault which sold Pontiac, Buick, GMC and Cadillac. Sometime in the early 1970s they changed roles. Noranda started selling Pontiac, Buick and GMC, while Thibault took on Chevrolet and Oldsmobile. But Cadillac stayed with Thibault.
Meanwhile, in a town about 90 km west, Kirkland Lake Ontario, the GM dealer sold the whole shot, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac and GMC.
I wouldn’t doubt that in larger cities there might have been single line dealers, but I don’t recall ever hearing of them.
Growing up in northern Quebec in the 60’s and 70’s, the dealership offerings were always paired up as Andre has described above, Chevy with Oldsmobile and Pontiac with Buick. Cadillac seemed to be awarded to the more successful/influential franchise, but more typically with the Chevy/Olds store. I can’t recall seeing any Opel models or sales in my area, or any stand alone GM stores. I was familiar with some of the dealers in Montreal at the time, and they seemed to be paired up in the same manner with no stand alone stores. I was amazed to see that Detroit dealers had the stand alone stores when I moved to Windsor in 1978, or were allowed to have competing franchises, like a Toyota or Ford store.
I love these rare oddballs. Really cool find.
The location looks very much like Southern Vancouver Island, where I grew up. Especially in Victoria, there are a lot of cool old British cars around. In the 1960’s there were many immigrants from the UK settling in the area, so the bought the cars they knew. When I as a kid there were many around.
Close, in Vancouver.
That was my second choice. Looks much like where I live in Vancouver but I haven’t see the car.
I’m surprised they could get these enough cheaper than a Chevy II to make it worthwhile to sell them as Canada-only cars.
For that matter, the Viva/Epic might have been a decent seller but was the Commonwealth tariff preference really strong enough to make it worthwhile to tool up LHD Vauxhalls for Canada when they were sending Opel Kadetts to the US?
From what I understand, when the late ’50s import boom hit, Opels were not introduced into the Canadian market. This was partly because favorable import treatment/cultural preference for British products made Vauxhalls more attractive in Canada, and partly because the two brands that sold Vauxhalls and Opels in the U.S. (Pontiac and Buick) shared a dealer network in Canada, and having the same dealers sell both in Canada was seen as redundant (especially if Vauxhall’s favorable import treatment would allow it to significantly undercut Opel on price).
In the U.S., of course, Opel did better than Vauxhall, and Vauxhall was gone by 1962 or so. This created the weird situation that ‘nlpnt’ noted, where Opels were sold in the U.S. but not Canada, and (LHD) Vauxhalls were sold in Canada but not the U.S. I’ve read that the Canadian government actually reduced or eliminated the favorable import treatment for British cars around 1963, concerned over what the flood of imports in the late ’50s/early ’60s was doing to the domestic Canadian auto industry (given the traditionally greater Canadian slant towards smaller/cheaper/more economical cars, the imports gained an even greater market share in Canada in that era than in the U.S.). If that’s correct, there may have been no real financial advantage to selling Vauxhalls rather than Opels in Canada in the late ’60s. But the way things had played out, one brand had gotten established in Canada and the other in the U.S., and out of inertia that’s how things stayed.
Vauxhall products were phased out in Canada in the early ’70s. Chevrolet dealers never sold them after the 1970 model year, due to the introduction of the North American Vega for 1971, while Pontiac dealers kept them for a few years longer. From what I understand, GM ultimately tried selling Opels in Canada for a few years in the 1970s without much success. By the late 1970s the Opels sold in the U.S. were actually badge-engineered Isuzus, and by the early ’80s the Opel brand was completely gone from the U.S. market.
I never saw an Opel in Canada until the GT in the early seventies. And I think that’s the only Opels I’ve ever seen in Canada 🙂
The free trade arrangement with Commonwealth countries stayed in place until the UK joined the European Union in … uhm … well, around 1970 or so. Since the vast majority of Commonwealth trade was UK to Commonwealth countries and back, and not between the Commonwealth countries, that whole thing pretty much became moot after the UK’s Europeanization.
And after Vauxhall left Pontiac-Buick dealers, Pontiac got the Astre, a split-grille Vega, a few years before it came out in The States.
The HC Viva came to Canada for 1971 as the “Firenza”, curiously without the Vauxhall name. It was a quality disaster that was dropped after about a year and a half, and prompted Canada’s first-ever class action suit. The Astre was rushed into production for 1973 to keep a subcompact in Pontiac showrooms.
The Firenza was very much a GM “Deadly Sin”.
This car was my Isuzu Impulse moment. Even after consulting the web I got the nomenclature wrong, and luckily dave_7 corrected me on the Cohort. It really is in amazing condition, right down to the gleaming hubcaps. The lighting wasn’t right for an interior shot, but it looked pristine.
Once a common car in NZ there is one survivor where I live in green and powerslide. Rust ate most of them while speedway took care of the rest the 6 will bolt in for racing.
Definitely the needle in the haystack find. Terrific.
No kidding, the proverbial hen’s teeth of cars. I haven’t seen one for years in Canada or the UK. Mind, I still have my Corgi model in burgandy stashed away, but that’s about as close as it gets.
Hi David,
What a find – these are rare enough in the UK so to find this is very impressive.
My uncle had a 1966 Victor 101 (as it was marketed), also in white with, I think, a red interior with a bench seat and column gear change, which were unusual and getting rarer in the UK by then. He worked for Vauxhall, as a design office manager, and had access to a new Vauxhall every year.
The low survival rate is primarily down to old car public enemy number 1 – rust
I remember these coming out, and wondering why they bothered. The previous Victor was pretty good, and I expected something better than this to replace it. This was one of the first British cars with curved side glass, which meant the cabin could be as wide as the car, giving more space inside. It also meant the car looked a bit barrel-shaped. Not as poor an effort as the FA Victor, but still not really worth preserving.
Awesome little car! I would have been completely stumped if I came across one in the wild. The styling reminds me of the HD-HR series Holdens, especially the greenhouse on both the sedan and wagon.
I reside in Manila & one of my neighbors has a 1964-1967 Vauxhall Victor 101 FC that’s still in remarkably good condition with original engine & upholstery – a miracle since the Philippines is a humid, tropical country & Vauxhalls are notorious for corrosion problems. General Motors had a local assembler/concessionaire, Yutivo Hardware, which assembled selected GM products from 1953-1973 (Buick, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Opel, Vauxhall, Holden, Bedford) as well as one non-GM model (Triumph Herald).
When I lived in the UK in the ’70s and ’80s, a Vauxhall Victor FC like this one, also white, would periodically park in my street. It belonged to the Avon lady.
The fc Victor was not as well received as the previous fb model in the UK.The “space curve” design as Vauxhall called it resulted in the barrel sided look a previous commentator referred to and the overall length of the car was too large compared to its arch rival the Ford Cortina.Even so it was a popular family car and very roomy inside but always lost out in the sales race to Ford.In the metal these cars don’t look as bland as the photos suggest.They also had an interesting rear screen which curved in wards unlike the rest of the glasshouse.Sadly endemic corrosion and the perceived blandness in styling has seen the car become almost extinct.Even the fb Victor is rare now.. both models eclipsed by the dramatic styling of the original f type Victor
A former neighbour’s son used to have one of these in the ’70s/early ’80s, a 1965 estate. It was 18 years old when I photographed it and was clearly on borrowed time: