[This article was originally published in the Motoring section of The Daily Telegraph on 29 August 2000. The article was written by Peter Dron and is reproduced here for the interest of Saab owners. The copyright for the article is held by The Daily Telegraph.]
If you are fascinated by coincidences, read on, because here's a spooky set of them.
What alerted me to it was Saab's announcement that it is redesigning its logo: now that Scania and Saab are no longer associated companies, the car division has unsurprisingly decided to indulge in some literal badge engineering, dropping the Scania name.
The first coincidence is that the only two car companies in the world to use a griffin symbol - Saab and Vauxhall - should end up sharing platforms within a larger corporation, General Motors. But my story is altogether weirder than that.
While erasing from its badge the name Scania, Saab is keeping and indeed enlarging its traditional griffin emblem. Well, it's a tradition that dates all the way back to 1985, when Saab merged with Scania. Yes, the griffin is the truck company's symbol, drawn from its origins in the region of Skane, in southern Sweden.
The Swedish griffin, like Vauxhall's, is derived from medieval heraldry. Before 1985, Saab's badge contained no mythical creatures; instead, it included a stylisation of a twin-engined aeroplane, but there is no point in returning to that, since ties with the aero division have also been severed.
The griffin was a mythical monster, combining a lion's body with an eagle's beak and wings (and in some versions, it had a snake for its tail). One would not wish to meet one of those on a dark night but Saab, understandably, emphasises the positive points about griffins, especially that the beast symbolises vigilance and protection. However, it is worth mentioning also (here is another small, heavily ironical coincidence) that the griffin was traditionally the enemy of the horse.
Vauxhall's griffin, like its name, dates back to the time of King John. I knew that the name Vauxhall was a corruption from Falkes de Breant or Falkes de Breaute, a 13th century knight who sported a griffin on his shield. He may also have been hazardous to encounter on a dark night. His house, Falkes Ball or Fulke's Hall, gave its name to the London district which became famous, and then notorious, for its pleasure garden. The Victorians decided that far too much pleasure was being had there, so they closed it down and built it over in 1859.
Part of the site, in Wandsworth Road, not far from where New Covent Garden market now stands, became the Vauxhall Iron Works. In 1903, the first Vauxhall cars were manufactured there, but within two years the company had outgrown these premises and car production transferred to Luton.
What I had not known was that Fulk's connection with what became Vauxhall was through marriage. His own estate, granted to him by King John, was 40 miles to the north, in Bedfordshire; yes, in Luton, to be precise, and the Vauxhall Iron Works' choice of that town as a suitable place to build cars was apparently completely coincidental. I wonder if Fulk ever travelled to southern Sweden for a spot of pro-celebrity jousting?
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