1970 Opel
GT

From the owner's personal collection

Supposedly, back in the late 1960s, GM tasked its Opel subsidiary with designing and building a budget-minded Corvette for the European market. While its 1900 cc in-head cam inline 4-cylinder engine didn't come close to living up to the Corvette's performance, its styling and handling proved good enough for the little GT to be a popular budget sports car. Eurpean models were available with 1.1 liter engines, but the U.S.-spec cars (for the most part) came with 1.9 liter powerplants. With a transverse leaf front suspension and a solid rear axle with trailing arms, coil springs and panhard rod, the handling was good, but not stellar. Many of the European cars were equipped with a rear sway bar (without which, the inside wheel would lift under hard cornering), but they were only available as an option on the US cars.

Early on in his ownership, Bob opted for a different set of wheels. While it may have seemed a bit extreme to replace the 13" steel wheels with a set of 17" Enkei RS6 aluminum units, the change in the overall appearance of the car was amazing. It went from looking like a baby Corvette to some sort of exotic. Ever since changing the wheels, many people seem to mistake this Opel for some model of Ferrari, Maserati or some other exotic.

After getting this GT sorted out and driving it around Los Angeles and Dallas for a few years, Bob decided to freshen up the interior and rebuild the suspension. The engine had already been rebuilt at 96,000 miles by the previous owner, so aside from rebuilding the driveshaft/torque tube components, the mechanicals were already in order. The interior received new carpeting, seat reupolstering and a vinyl dash kit from Opel GT Source.

The suspension rebuild utilized all urethane bushings and an intermediate front leaf spring that dropped ride height 1". While that work alone made a significant improvement in the car's handling, the addition of a matched set of ADCO anti-sway bars made for one very tight handling sports car.

This Opel's webpage has consistently been the most-visited page on the Midlife Classics website - garnering at least twice as many hits as any other page on the site. Out in public, it gathers more looks and generates more conversations than any other car that Bob has ever owned (and he's had some pretty rare and cool cars over the years). The comments range from "I had one of those in college" to "What model Ferrari is that?".

It has also generated more purchase requests than any other car Bob has owned - so much so that he eventually sold his parts car to one of the requestors and then restored it for him. You can see that GT parked with Bob's car in the slideshow above. You can also see that GT's restoration projece page here.

We have once again been asked to restore yet another Opel GT. You can follow the progress of that restoration here.

SPECIFICATIONS