Vauxhall Vivaro Stunt Driving by Paul Swift: Ballet on Four Wheels

According to plant director Mike Wright, the new procedures were welcomed with open arms by the QA branch because it provides a more realistic way of validating the agility, durability and safety of every new Vauxhall Vivaro van produced here. Some of you might deem the alternative approach to sign-off the Vivaro as overkill, but you can’t deny the test driver is one helluva talented guy to say the least.

“We want to ensure that every customer receives the very best van that we can produce, and that means putting it through the most demanding manoeuvres we can think of. Our official test driver – known as ‘Stig-aro’ to the men and women on the production line – has now got his procedure off to such a fine art that it barely raises an eyebrow in the factory. They just let him get on with it.” explains plant director Mike Wright.

Spoiler alert: there are lots of J-turns, handbrake turns and even a scene where the Vauxhall Vivaro is driven on two wheels across a designated part of the factory. It’s a pretty remarkable feat to actually adopt this apparently lairy type of new testing considering that Vauxhall Luton is currently the only light commercial vehicle manufacturing plant in the United Kingdom.

Vauxhall Luton became the only facility to bear the British van manufacturing flag after the Ford Transit assembly plant from Southampton was unfortunately shut down last year. Since 2001, workers employed at Vauxhall’s facility built nearly a million Vivaro vans, with 44,000 built in 2013. Some 52 percent of production is destined for the rest of Europe, where the Vivaro is marketed as an Opel.