And if those hubcaps did not bestow sufficient kudos on the owner, the GLS also featured velour upholstery, front head restraints, a digital clock and a choice of metallic paint finishes. Volkswagen boasted of its trip mileage recorder, vanity mirror in the front passenger’s sun visor, cigar lighter and “illuminated instrumentation”. Expectations of “luxury travel” could be quite modest in 1981.
The price of such decadence was £4,149 and, as a small, two-door, front-wheel-drive saloon, the Derby had few direct rivals. The Austin Allegro 1.3 HL was £4,169 but lacked the Volkswagen’s three-box styling, while the Vauxhall Chevette L saloon for £3,869 was rear-wheel-drive. At £2,990, the Fiat 128 1300 CL was cheap and offered an extra pair of doors, but its lines dated back to 1969.
But no competitor could offer the Derby GLS’s blend of “a classical shape with modern concept”. Not to mention: “Its elegant styling impresses.”
Thanks to Mark King.
We use the fascinating howmanyleft.co.uk for figures of surviving examples, but some cars present more of a challenge than others, so the figures are rarely authoritative. Some pre-1974 records were lost before the DVLA centralised the process, while some cars have their model type misnamed on the V5 registration documents. A further issue is the omission of the exact model name or generation, or distinction between saloon and estate bodystyles.