Vauxhall Belmont
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- An unrelated vehicle, Holden Belmont, was manufactured by Holden, GM's Australian subsidiary in the 1970s.
The Belmont was a saloon car sold in the United Kingdom by Vauxhall, the British subsidiary of General Motors between 1984 and 1991. It was essentially equivalent to a sedan version of the Opel Kadett E, whose other body styles were marketed in the United Kingdom as Vauxhall Astra.
With hatchbacks now firmly established as the preferred bodystyle in small European family cars, there was less demand for saloons. So during the 1980s, many European manufacturers sold saloon versions of their big selling hatchbacks with different nameplates. Ford's saloon version of the Escort hatchback was badged the Orion and Volkswagen's Golf-based saloon was sold as the Jetta, so it seemed inevitable that Vauxhall/Opel would launch a saloon version of the award winning Astra/Kadett which went on sale across Europe in the autumn of 1984.
Opel/Vauxhall's answer to the Ford Orion and Volkswagen Jetta was the Belmont, which wore the Belmont badge in the UK. In the rest of Europe, Opel did not differentiate between the saloon and other models in the Kadett range. (In South Africa, it was called the Monza, not to be confused with the larger model sold in Europe.) Apart from the name it was very much a saloon version of the Astra. The only other major differences were extra rear legroom and a less gloomy interior, but the Belmont was almost as big as a Vauxhall Cavalier. It was mechanically identical to the Astra hatchback, using the same engines, chassis and suspension.
When Opel/Vauxhall introduced an all-new Astra in the summer of 1991, the Belmont nameplate was shelved, the car never having never lived up to Vauxhall's claim that it was "not just a booted Astra".
In late 2004, it was revealed that the Belmont was the most stolen car in the United Kingdom in terms of ratio stolen, with 1,978 vehicles stolen in 2003, which amounted to around 1 out of every 10 Belmonts registered. At this time, an estimated 20,000 Belmonts remained on the road. The car also topped a similar list for 2005, this list being published in December 2006.[1] [2]
