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Opel Cars Brief History of Opel

Opel  

Adam Opel manufactured the first Opel motor car in 1898, the Opel-Lutzmann.  Opel started mounting their own bodies on imported Darracq chassis in 1902, and began manufacturing cars of their own design shortly afterward.

After a slow start and a disasterous fire in 1911 Opel became more and more successful. 

Opel survived WW 1 and by 1929, when General Motors took over, was selling over 43.000 cars a year. 

In the 1930s Opel offered three model ranges,  

The small sized range became the Kadett (1937/39), the medium-sized models (Regent and Olympia - named after the 1936 Berlin Olympics) were extremely popular. 

The six-cylinder models developed from the 2-litre and Super-Six (1937/38) to become the Kapitän in 1939.  

By 1937 they employed 22000 people. After WW2 production of cars recommenced in 1947 with the Olympia and Kapitän.

Until the early eighties Opels found their way into Britain alongside Vauxhalls, and brought some special German models with the Chevette/Astra/Cavalier clones. the most famous of which is the Opel Manta, less famous but better looking and extremely rare is Opels GT coupe. Some say this is a clone of the Mako Shark Corvette Stingray, but it actually came out before the Stingray, so it may have been the other way around. As both are GM marques its likely there was some cross pollination of ideas.    

Slowly but surely the Opel range has become the European standard marque for GM, being now only the badge brother of Britain's Vauxhall range.