Could this have been the coolest Vauxhall ever?

On paper, it doesn’t get much less exotic than this – a Seventies Vauxhall, revealed in Birmingham. But the longer you stare at the car the more it entices you in. This is the Vauxhall Equus concept, unveiled at the British international motor show in April 1978. Really though, where better to reveal a Vauxhall than at the NEC? Company boss Bob Price wanted to see if the company could offer a more modern take on the likes of the Triumph Spitfire or MG Midget – popular cars, but feeling a touch creaky even in the late Seventies. The design team put the car together in a whistlestop nine months, rampaging through the company parts store to find bits.

The design team was told that it had to use parts from Vauxhall where possible, which gave the Equus a production-ready air. The concept was based on the chassis of the fairly hideous Panther Lima, an incredibly odd fibreglass-bodied roadster from the Seventies. That car was itself based on the Vauxhall Magnum, an entirely forgettable mid-Seventies family saloon. So the Equus fulfilled the parts brief, but the design team got help from the chaps at Panther to create a viable working concept.

The Equus was put together by US designer Wayne Cherry and his team. He had taken over as Vauxhall’s head of design in 1975 and would go on to an illustrious career at then-parent company General Motors, penning a number of Cadillac and Chevrolet models via the 1993 Vauxhall Corsa. He said at the time that his aim was to create as pure and simple a two-seat roadster as possible, and the clean look was certainly successful in that department. The Equus also used Vauxhall’s signature ‘droopsnoot’ front end first popularised on the 1973 Firenza coupe, for an extra fancy look.

There was a bit more space than in the Panther Lima donor car, because the cabin was widened and the floor lowered to maximise space and give passengers that low down roadster feel. The interior was fairly minimalist, but many elements would have been familiar to Vauxhall fans of the 1970s. Off-the-shelf parts included reskinned doors and seat frames from the Cavalier, air vents from the Chevette and the instrument panel from the Royale.

Of course, that rear end might look nice, but the lack of a bootlid might get a bit annoying, having to stuff things through into the back between the seats. Oh, and there’s no roof. Not so useful in the UK. Otherwise the existence of the car in itself was all the flourish that Vauxhall needed – the company might have been bought up by General Motors in 1925, but the mid-Seventies was when GM started to merge models between Vauxhall and – gasp – the Germans over at Opel. The Equus project was kept secret from Opel, a way to prove that the Brits still had it. Whatever ‘it’ was.

The Equus got Vauxhall’s long-serving 2.3-litre Slant 4 engine (it was put in cars from 1967 until 1983), producing 109bhp and 140lb ft of torque. Strangely you could also find the spare wheel under the bonnet, which makes sense if you can’t open the boot. At least if you did get a flat tyre in the Equus, the replacement wheel would have already been warmed up. The Panther Lima the concept car was based on could do 0-60mph in 9.9 seconds, which was respectable for the period, so a production Equus could have been a fun little machine.

The team behind the Equus reckoned they could have put the car into limited run production within as little as nine months, although the concept car itself was only ready a mere 10 days before it went on display in Birmingham. Despite being a popular addition to the motor show stand, the Equus ultimately ruled itself out of the production car running because of the roof and boot design. Cherry’s team hadn’t engineered the folding roof into the design, which would have needed significant further investment. Of course, if you liked the look of the wheels, the rather attractive design was later seen on the MkII Astra in 1984. Perhaps a less worthy outlet for the alloys.

Whether by design or circumstance, the Equus ended up being the last proper concept car produced by Vauxhall for 25 years, until the VX Lightning concept in 2003, which led to the Opel GT roadster, another car we didn't get to drive, although this time because they couldn't be bothered converting the left-hand-drive version with low demand in the UK. The Equus itself was Cherry-picked by the head of design himself for his own inspiration, accompanying the SUV style guru when he returned to the United States as head of design for the whole of General Motors. Was he staring wistfully at the Equus as he signed off the design of the Hummer H1? Probably.