Opel took inspiration from parent company GM and developed their own American style sports car the Opel GT. Resembling a shorter coke bottle shaped Corvette it should have been a huge hit. Whilst it sold well, it didn’t secure a future for Opel as a sports car maker. It is also said that this car was the reason that the Vauxhall XVR project in the UK was cancelled.
The GT was considered a brave move by Opel and was led by designer Erhard Schnell. Instead of forming a more straightforward coupe version of the Kadette by changing the sheet metal, they were a little more radical. Developing the car from the ground up as a model in its own right. Ok, the mechanicals were from the Kadette, but there were many unique things about the GT. The rotating headlamps are for example an unusual feature being manually controlled.
The concept of a front mid mounted coupe was developed by Opel’s Advanced Design Studio in Rüsselsheim, Germany, which opened in 1964. Schnell was the man responsible for how the car looked. “The Experimental GT was based on the B Kadette,” said Schnell. “It
was our initiative, our after-work car and when we rolled it out, the public said, ‘Cool’.
The GT was developed in secret and only appeared in front of the public at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1965. “For the public it was unbelievable, almost inconceivable,” says Schnell, “so management had to react.”
The Opel Test Centre in Rodgau-Dudenhofen was responsible for the development of the GT to get to production.
