Vauxhall Equus Concept

As nobody at Leyland showed the same enthusiasm and interest as Wayne and his colleagues at Luton who were all for anything that would inject some glamour into the Vauxhall brand. Vauxhall had all the hardware that Jankel needed and were only too happy to supply it. So this collaboration was the reason for the Equus to be based on the Lima chassis and the reason why Panther were asked to build it. Back to the Luton Design & Engineering Department: Because a Vauxhall sports car did not figure in GM Europe's forward planning all the work on Equus was done in secret with only a few people within Vauxhall who knew anything about the project. Unconstrained by any Opel interfearence Wayne Cherry and John Taylor went ahead and did what they wanted to see in a small sports car, "we just went ahead and did it" Cherry said, "Boy that's the most uncompromising design I've ever worked on" Cherry further enthused, citing that sports cars had become too compromised and the simple 2 seater concept had been lost. As Cherry further commented on Equus "It's a pure graphic statement. On a car like this the designer has an obligation to try some things he wouldn't normally do on a bread and butter model. The car is defined graphically with edges to give it form and shape. A lot of cars have edges that make them look models from the back of a cereal packet. Others are round and fat. In between these extremes, you can accent the shape with edges so the surfaces are taut and tight not flat and featureless".

When you look closely at Equus it is the shades and shadows that are defined by simple lines that gives Equus its pleasant form. The body swage so effectively outlines the form by means of highlight and shade that it almost looks as if the silver bodywork has more than one shade of paint, it doesn't. Even simple details like the wheel arches being un-lipped and outlined with rubber strips become part of the overall effect. In order to lower the seats and widen the foot wells on either side of the backbone the Lima chassis was reworked for Equus, the glass-fibre bodywork produced by Panther from the original Vauxhall clay mock-up was quite simple and Bob Jankel was quoted as saying "we could have it in small scale production within nine months". The car used many readily available off the shelf Vauxhall components such as: the CF engine and gearbox, the re-skinned Cavalier Coupe doors, Royale instruments and Cavalier frames.

The Triplex screen might have been a problem as it was intricately curved with the bonnet line and there was no boot lid, access was through behind the front seats. Wayne Cherry wanted to call the car "The Force" but in the end John Taylor's chosen name Equus was used, Taylor also acted as the main link man between Vauxhall and Panther. The car was ready just 10 days before the NEC show and delivered by Panther to Luton Hoo, a favourite for Vauxhall photo shoots, on hand was Cherry and Taylor as well as senior Vauxhall executives including Bob Price who, seeing the car for the first time, took about 10 seconds to say "show it, just go ahead and show it"

The car was shown at the NEC Motor Show in October 1978 and was a major attraction on the Vauxhall stand and fueled speculation as to whether or not Vauxhall were serious about building it. Car magazine at the time proclaimed the go-ahead had already been given - as usual they were wrong. Equus was a superb piece of design and a credit to the Luton Design Department, it gave Vauxhall something exotic to exhibit, they even produced a brochure about the car, but there was never any serious intention to build Equus. The costs would have been prohibitive for a car with no boot lid and no provision of folding roof and if either were to be engineered into the design then the costs would have escalated further, and this is without getting into issues such as crash worthiness and passenger protection. It was brilliant but just as a pipe dream. The car is now in the US with Wayne Cherry who was so taken with the car he took it with him when he took over as head of GM Design