Vauxhall Viva HB

About the Vauxhall Viva HB

The Vauxhall Viva was a small family car produced by Vauxhall in a succession of three versions between 1963 and 1979. These were designated as the HA, HB and HC series.

The Viva was introduced a year after Vauxhall's fellow GM company Opel launched the Opel Kadett A. Both cars were a result of the same General Motors project and share the same floorpan and engine constructions, but with one main difference being the use of metric measurements for the Opel and imperial ones for the Vauxhall. They are also visually similar, however few components are interchangeable and the cars are thus not "sister models" or versions of one another.[1] A van version was also produced, as the Bedford HA. In the UK the Viva's principal competitors at the time of its launch included the well-established Ford Anglia and Morris Minor.

The third generation HC series was the last solely Vauxhall designed passenger car when it ceased production in 1979, since all future Vauxhalls would be badge engineered Opel models.

The HB Viva, announced in September 1966[10] and sold by Vauxhall until 1970, was a larger car than the HA, featuring coke bottle styling, and was modelled after American General Motors (GM) models such as the Chevrolet Impala/Caprice of the period. It featured the same basic engine as the HA, but enlarged to 1,159 cc, but with the added weight of the larger body the final drive gearing was reduced from 3.9 to 1 to 4.1 to keep the nippy performance (except the SL90 which retained the 3.9 diff having the power to cope with the higher ratio).

The automatic Viva HB was offered from February 1967, and fitted with the ubiquitous Borg Warner Type 35 system. Cars of this size featuring automatic transmission were still unusual owing to the amount of power the transmission systems absorbed: in a heartfelt if uncharacteristically blunt piece of criticism a major British motoring journal later described Viva HBs with automatic transmission as "among the slowest cars on the road".