GM Vauxhall Motors Ltd.

The roots of the carmaker Vauxhall Motors go back to 1857, when the Scotsman Alexander Wilson founded a company called Vauxhall Iron Works in Vauxhall near London, England. The company worked in marine engineering until, around the turn of the century, it became interested in "horseless carriages". In 1903 its first car was completed, with a 5-horsepower single-cylinder engine. To expand production, the plant had to move. The new plant was completed away from London, in Luton, Bedfordshire, in 1905.

In 1925 General Motors Co. became the new owner of the Vauxhall car plant. The plant was expanded and new buildings were built to begin truck production. The new trucks were named "Bedford" after the county of Bedfordshire. The first 2-tonne trucks left the factory in 1931 under the model designations WHG and WLG. The Bedford WHB and WLB buses were also built on the truck chassis.

During the Second World War the plant built only military equipment. After the war the new K, M and O series went into production. In the 1950s the previous range was replaced by the new 7-tonne Bedford S series. The Bedford SB buses were built on S-series chassis. They were followed by the R-series truck and the Bedford CA van, which became Bedford's most popular model of all time (more than 370,000 were built in 1952–1969).

In 1960 the plant introduced the new TK series, which replaced the S series. The last model under General Motors ownership was the TM-series truck, launched in 1975. In 1978 the 3-millionth Bedford was built.

The Bedford plant in Dunstable was sold to AWD in 1987; truck production continued until 1992, when the company went bankrupt.