Vauxhall is an icon of British manufacturing with a proud history dating back more than 150 years.

Despite aggressive job-cutting in recent years, it still employs 5,000 workers directly at Luton, Bedfordshire and Ellesmere Port, Merseyside, while many thousands more jobs in supplier and ancillary firms also depend on its well-being.

In recent years Vauxhall has worked hard to improve its efficiency, with the Ellesmere Port plant — home of the Astra – producing a record 189,000 cars in 2005. But it has also slimmed down its operations substantially and, during the past decade, has halved the size of its British workforce.

In the process Vauxhall has also lost its unwanted reputation for union militancy – Unite’s firebrand Scouse leader, Tony Woodley, is a former employee – and a reorganisation at Ellesmere Port two years ago, resulting in the loss of 900 jobs, was less traumatic for both the company and for unions than previous attempts at rationalisation.

Vauxhall was founded in 1857 by Alexander Wilson, in the part of South London from which it takes its name, as a pump and engine manufacturer. The company built its first car in 1903, switching to Luton two years later. In its early days it was best known for sports cars such as the Prince Henry, produced from 1911 until the First World War. However, sales were poor after the war, leading to Vauxhall’s takeover in 1925 by General Motors, which paid $2.5 million for the business – about $380 million today – and switched to building US-style vehicles, which had become popular since Ford’s arrival in Britain in 1909.

It moved into commercial vehicles, for which it is now nearly as famous, almost by accident. Bedford Vehicles was launched in 1930 as the Wall Street Crash a year earlier, and the subsequent slump, had made it uneconomic to import US-built trucks to Britain.

During the Second World War, the company played a valuable role in the war effort, producing about 250,000 Bedford trucks and 5,640 Churchill tanks. In 1953 Vauxhall’s one millionth car rolled off the production line but, by the 1960s and 1970s, things were on the wane. The company had acquired an unfortunate reputation for producing cars that were prone to rusting, while its key model – the Victor – had been overtaken by Ford’s more popular Cortina.

The fightback began in 1975, with the Chevette, followed two years later by the Cavalier – the key model that drove sales in the 1980s. By the time the Cavalier was axed in 1995, Vauxhall was pushing Ford hard for the number one spot in the British market – even though its successor, the Vectra, never won the hearts of motorists in quite the same way.

In 2000 the motor industry was rocked when GM decided to end car production at Luton after a profits slump, with the loss of about 2,000 jobs – although vans continue to be made in the town.

Vauxhall’s famous griffin emblem, which has been used on the cars for 105 years, bizarrely goes back even farther than the company itself. It appeared on the coat of arms of Fulk le Breant, a 13th-century mercenary soldier, whose house was known as Fulk’s Hall and, in time, Vauxhall.

Earlier this year, the badge received a facelift, in what was seen at the time as a vote of confidence from GM in its British brand. Unfortunately, that may come to be seen as a false dawn.

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