Like many early car manufacturers, Opel started out by making other machines.
Adam Opel was born in 1837 and trained as a locksmith. After some travel he started to manufacture sewing machines, there was clearly pent up demand for small machines in the 19th century as many car builders started this way. Then like some of the British manufacturers, he diversified into bicycles. Germany was the centre of bicycle manufacturing in Europe and was exporting to many countries.
When Opel died in 1895 he was the top sewing machine manufacturer and produced 1,000s of bicycle a year. It was his 5 sons that took the company into the new world of motoring by acquiring the rights to Lutzmann and rebadging them as Opel-Lutzmann’s in 1898. This lasted two years before Opel signed an agreement with the French Darracq company to purchase chassis from France and then Opel built the bodies. These were called Opel-Darracqs.
From 1906 they built their own full cars and after a fire that destroyed their factory in 1911, they dropped the manufacture of sewing machines to concentrate on cars, bicycles and motorcycles. This was the start of something big as two years later they were the biggest car manufacturer in Germany.
Opel were the first German manufacturer to install a production line in the mid 20s and after an inspection by General Motors, the Opel family sold 80% of the company to the Americans in 1929. Two years later, GM took the rest of the company filling the family coffers substantially.
In 1937 bicycle production ended – who knew that GM made bicycles and soon after the Nazi Government commandeered the factory for military production. GM then naturally wrote off the investment – what else would you do when a dictator nicks your factory!
However, in 1948 after a couple of years of post war production, GM reasserted its ownership of the company. By this stage, they were producing the Blitz truck and the Olympia car. The Kadett model had been stolen by the Soviets although it soon came back under Opel’s control.
GM used Opel as their design centre and many of the GM brands across the world used the designs with different model names – the 1st Holden Commodore was based on a Reckord and many of the US brands used designs such as the Chevrolet Cobalt, Saturn Astra and Cadillac Catera. It’s not surprising really as European designs were infinitely more exciting than US ones!
Over the years, Opels have been built all over Europe including the old East German factory at Eisenach that built BMW and EMW’s. Their foray in Asia was initially successful with Opel being a good seller over the US brands. However as sales started to dwindle they pulled out. By this stage Daewoo was at its peak before keeling over themselves and becoming a manufacturing plant for the other GM brands.
Notable Opel models include the Kadett that was finally superseded by the Astra after many versions, the Reckord, Commodore, Kapitan, Calibra and GT. The GT’s natural successor was the Speedster, also rebadged as the Vauxhall VX220, Pontiac and Saturn models and used Lotus components.
After 110 years, Opel was caught up in the debacle that General Motors found itself in, and as part of a rationalisation, GM started to sell off most of its non US brands. Opel and Vauxhall came under that plan and a bidding war started that included Magna, a Canadian parts manufacturer with car building plants in Europe and even FIAT. With the help of a large financial carrot from the German Government, Magna were chosen as the buyer, with GM retaining a smaller stake in the new company. Then in late 09, GM back-tracked and decided to keep Opel and Vauxhall, probably due to the fact that some members of the EU were unhappy with Germany's backing of the Magna bid. 2010 will be an interesting year for Opel!