Never heard of it? I can't say I'm surprised as it seems to have been almost totally forgotten and by publishing this post I have doubled the amount of material about it available on the internet! The only other page I can find is on the excellent Vauxpedia, a first-stop resource for all things Vauxhall.
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| Vauxhall publicity photo of the elusive Albany. No one ever seems to have photographed one on the road! |
So what was the Albany and why has it been consigned to the scrapyard of automotive history?
In short it was Vauxhall's first MPV, but also basically a Bedford Midi van with windows. Although the Midi was already well established in minibus form, these were utilitarian vehicles aimed squarely at the commercial market, and the success of the likes of the Renault Espace prompted Vauxhall to produce a far more upmarket car-like seven-seater.
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| The Bedford Midi. Fine as a van but did it ever stand a chance in the MPV market? |
The Albany was launched at the 1990 British Motor Show and featured an impressive list of standard equipment that was certainly a cut above the basic Midi, including tinted glass, twin sunroofs, reclining seats, separate rear heating and power steering. Sadly, all of these luxuries couldn't disguise the fact it was very obviously based not only on a van, but a van that was starting to show its age against the competition. Only one brochure was ever issued for the Albany, which pictured the vehicle in various aspirational 'lifestyle' settings where it was horribly out of place but seemed to aim it primarily at business customers such as hotels and corporate shuttle services rather than private buyers.
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| The Albany brochure promoting its lifestyle credentials. The glider would probably be a more pleasant mode of transport. |
The upshot of all this was that the Albany flopped. The range never expanded beyond a single model available in just two colours (the Bordeaux Red and Westminster Blue illustrated above) and propelled by a crude and underpowered 2-litre petrol engine. Perhaps more significantly than the vehicle's own failings though, the market for luxury van-derived MPVs we see today exemplified by the Ford Tourneo and Mercedes Viano just didn't exist 25 years ago and cars such as the Espace were aimed very much at the small niche of providing fairly basic transport for large families without portraying a prestige image, so the Albany's 'executive' credentials were somewhat misplaced. Only 300 were officially sold before it was quietly dropped just over a year after launch, and around half of those are said to have actually been registered either by dealers or by Vauxhall themselves in a desperate attempt to improve the dire sales figures. Vauxhall's next attempt at an MPV, the American-built Sintra, met with little more success but it was third time lucky with the innovative Zafira.
I actually have some recollection of seeing an Albany in real life. A large family in the village where I went to primary school had a red one - this was the early nineties so they probably bought it new. Even in my very young mind I knew it was basically a van and vastly inferior to the Mitsubishi Space Wagon my parents had at the time. Today there are apparently only two left on the road and the model has disappeared into almost total obscurity - has anyone actually seen one?
So there you have it, my own little tribute to a tiny, insignificant and forgotten part of automotive history.
