Vauxhall’s early cars were often high performance race-bred machines such as the 1913 30-98 designed by legendary engineer Laurence Pomeroy. By the time his 1980s counterpart, Paul Tosch, unveiled the stunning Lotus Carlton in 1989, press reaction to the quest for speed had changed radically. Pomeroy and his contemporaries were heroes at the vanguard of technology but Tosch and his bosses at GM were castigated for producing a car that was thought by the tabloids to be ‘too fast’, at 176mph, to be considered safe. In truth the media storm initially diverted attention from what was a stunning engineering tour de force and perhaps the greatest automotive achievement of its time.