1903, The First Vauxhall Car
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Vauxhall Motors, with roots in the marine engine and iron casting business, built its first motor car at its plant in Luton, England. Called the Model 719, it held two people and offered a five-horsepower engine.
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The first Vauxhall was intended to weigh less than 560 lbs. because of a law allowing it to dispense with a reverse gear. It missed this weight cut-off by 50 lbs. but stll only had two forward gears. In striving for this low weight, its designer, F. W. Hodges, created the first unit body construction. With his background as a marine engineer, Hodges designed his first frameless automobile body like that of a boat, because to him this was the logical way to do things. Most historians credit the 1922 Lancia Lambda as the first unit or monocque body, but Jan P. Norbye, in Special Interest Autos, Aug. - Oct. 1973, correctly gives this honor to Vauxhall.
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