Out on the road the H Type is not speedy in a modern sense, but add in the lack of seatbelts, need for double-clutching and a quite astonishing lack of grip and the journey feels a whole lot more perilous. The giant wheel, more like that of a bus than a small family hatch, telegraphs every single imperfection from the road directly to driver, the suspension is old-fashioned wafty and the engine is happy in a higher gear than you might expect. But it's a properly enjoyable drive.
You can find both under- and lift off oversteer here, not exactly what you expect with 34bhp, but with tyres this skinny, cross-plys of course, and a complete lack of anything in control other than you it’s a strange hoot behind the wheel.
This car meant that motoring joy was being brought to the masses, but then the war came along and stifled everything. Imagine today someone suddenly stopping the production of Corsas because we needed to build munitions – would our cars of today last the years-long war ahead?
After the war Vauxhall reintroduced the H Type, but it was a different world. Cash-strapped families could no longer reach even such an affordable car as the 10-4 and Vauxhall would withdraw from the small car market for the next couple of decades.
There might be no direct lineage and the H's life might have been snuffed out before its potential was reached, but this is a true ancestor to the affordable family cars we see today. Loaded with tech and flying off the shelves it foretold a future of motoring long before anyone was paying attention.