THE revival of the Vauxhall Viva name by General Motors proves the point that the original, produced in three versions between 1963 and 1979 was one of the era's most memorable family cars.

And by far the best of the Vivas of those years was the HB which had a touch of elegance its rivals could not match.

The original Viva, the HA was a three-box saloon which was standard, bread and butter motoring all the way and was very soon regarded as yesterday's car.

But the HB did away with boring straight lines and introduced a more curvy, almost seductive shape to woo the fans away from the likes of Ford and BMC designs.

Wraps were thrown off the HB Viva in September 1966and this little stalwart of family motoring lasted until 1970, clocking up 566,391 units.

It was a larger car than the HA and the curves came from the American trend of coke bottle styling, propounded by models including the Chevrolet Impala.

Early HA models featured the same basic engine as the HA but enlarged to 1,159cc due to the car's more imposing body.

The HB used a completely different suspension design from the HA, having double-wishbone and coil springs with integrated telescopic dampers at the front, and trailing arms and coil springs at the rear. It set new standards for handling in class as many of contemporaries were stuck with leaf springs and MacPherson struts.

Interestingly a Viva version was the car on which I wrote my very first road test report in the mid-1960s.

This was a performance version named the Brabham Viva was purported to have been developed with the aid of world racing champion Jack Brabham.

The Brabham with its distinctive lateral black stripes at the front of the bonnet that curved down the wings and then headed back to end in a taper at the front doors is almost impossible to find today.

It differed from the standard Viva SL/90 in having a different cam-shaft, uprated suspension with anti-roll bars, different exhaust manifolds, and a unique twin-carb manifold, as well as differing interior trim.

It was certainly a sparkler to drive and was one of my most memorable cars of the early days.

As time went of the Viva HB was offered with larger engine from the Victor series, but to me the purest expression of this car was the original 1966 model.

The HC version which succeeded it was nowhere near as pretty except in the Firenza coupe version.