General Motors began importing some of its German-made Opel models to the United States in the late 1950s, with those cars sold through Buick dealers here (at the same time, there was a similar push with British-built Vauxhalls sold at Pontiac dealers). From the late 1960s through middle 1970s, Opels became somewhat mainstream machinery in the USA, with the Kadett, Manta, and GT becoming common sights. Today's Junkyard Gem is an example of the latter machine, a sporty two-seater whose ancestry is a deep dive into 1960s GM design history.
The final Opel-badged cars sold here were rear-wheel-drive Isuzu Geminis (siblings to the Chevrolet Chevette) designated with various mashups of the Buick, Opel, and Isuzu names. The 1979 Buick Opel by Isuzu was the last of those, though of course we've seen plenty of rebadged Opels on our shores since that time. Of all the Opels that roamed American roads, the GT certainly was the coolest.
While the Manta was considered something of a German mini-Camaro back in 1970s America, the GT was seen by many as a German mini-Corvette. In fact, there is a common design connection between the 1968 Corvette and the 1968 Opel GT, with quite a bit of John DeLorean's 1964 Pontiac Banshee XP-833 mixed into both cars.
The GT was sold here from the 1969 through 1973 model years. The name was revived for the German-market version of the Pontiac Solstice/Saturn Sky in 2007 (the real gone cats opted for the South Korean-market version, called the Daewoo G2X).
This engine is the 1.9-liter Opel cam-in-head straight-four, which was what amounted to a pushrod engine with the cam moved up into the head and the pushrods deleted. It still has pushrod-style cam lifters and rocker arms but allowed for a slightly lower engine profile without the expense of a true overhead-cam design. If this is the original engine for this car, it was rated at 67 hp and 62 lb-ft. The GT was much slower than the Corvette, of course, but its 1815-pound curb weight meant that it could get out of its own way well enough.
The body has some rust, nothing too terrible, and the interior is thoroughly trashed. In Europe, a GT in this condition might be worth restoring, but even nice ones aren't particularly valuable in North America.
It wasn't for pudgy old Stalingrad vets!
Instead, fashionable German youngsters hooned it in the rain.
The US-market ads were less exciting.
1969 Opel GT in California Junkyard
