These drawings are the only photos of the original general assembly drawings taken before the fire in which they were lost. Most of the detailed drawings survived but these general assembly drawings were lost in the fire in 1953 at the Vauxhall drawing office. These are the only known photographic copies which were given to John Sutton when he worked at Vauxhall Motors in 1962. They had been kept in the bottom drawer of the desk of the man in charge of the drawing library.
The problem was that all the smaller drawings had been salvaged, albeit burnt at the edges and wet, but had then been photographed and filed in the wrong order. Once these general assembly drawings were made available it was possible to find the relevant drawings because each item on the drawings is identified by a Part number and a Drawing number. We were then able to find all the drawings for each model and separate them from drawings of the motorcyle, gas producer car and all manner of others.
