Why was the Vauxhall brand dropped in Ireland and replaced by Opel?

The answer you're looking for is that Vauxhall are seen as a British/English car and due to previous 'differences of opinion' with the British some people in Ireland wanted no association with them however small.


Opel is seen as a European or German brand rather than British hence the re-badging excercise.





Sounds far fetched I know but it's absolutely true.|||Vauxhall was an independent manufacturer, named after the area of the same name in London in 1857 where they first set up before moving production to Luton in Bedfordshire in 1905.





In 1925, the company was purchased by GM of America to give it a foothold in the UK and ultimately Europe in order to compete with Ford.





Opel was GMs German subsidiary and in the early 80s they directed an "Opelisation" of the Vauxhall brand which saw many models simply copied or imported. This was to save costs of development. This was also replicated with the Holden brand in Australia and New Zealand.





The Vauxhall brand was dropped in Ireland (Eire) in 1982 and other countries such as Cyprus, Malta and New Zealand later in the same decade.





It is generally accepted that the brand is too strong in the UK for GM to get rid of it in favour of Opel though the different model names were gradually dropped in favour of mainly Opel model names e.g. Vectra replaced Cavalier with the exception of Astra which replaced the Opel Kadett.





so i would guess that Vauxhall werent doing as well in ireland thus they had the oppertunity to drop the name and go with the main brand Opel|||Vauxhall is an area of South London. The men at the gas works got bored and started building cars in their spare time. The company became a major British car manufacturer and they also sold cars in Ireland.





GM took them over in the 1920s and they were eventually merged with Opel, GM's European arm. The cars continued to be marketed as Vauxhall in the UK - even though they were rebadged Opels. In Ireland, there was no point or commercial benefit to be gained by rebadging the cars with the name of a defunct English marque.