(2026) In 1965, my father’s career took a great hop leap forward. He was recruited by Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore to be professor of Neurology and to head its EEG Laboratory. If Hopkins’ EEG Lab wasn’t already the most highly regarded in the world, it soon would be. He had finally found the fertile setting for the rest of his career, which would blossom and make him the world’s most highly regarded Electroencephalographer.
Now that he couldn’t walk to work anymore, he needed a commuter car. His choice: a new green Opel Kadett. It very quickly earned the name Laubfrosch (tree frog), and not just because of its color. My father knew how to actually make it hop!
I was graced with the privilege to be the first one to witness this remarkable phenomena. A few days after our arrival in Towson, he and I walked up to Brooks Buick-Opel, which back then was on the corner York Rd. and Washington. While I gazed longingly at the Wildcat and Riviera in the showroom, my father talked to one of the salesmen for some time and signed papers. The salesman then had to extricate the little green Kadett, which was hiding in the far corner of the showroom hiding behind all those big Buicks. That was easier said than done, as all three Buicks had to be carefully maneuvered out through the single door. He enlisted the help of another salesman, both of whom did not seem very thrilled with this task. Undoubtedly the sales commission for selling one $1655 base Kadett sedan was not a great motivator.
Once the Kadett stood out on the apron, it was time for us to get in and drive it home. This would turn out to be almost as memorable as his first drive in the 1961 Starliner. A bit of personal history is required to set the scene: my father got his driver’s license in Vienna in 1939 after coming home from the invasion of Poland. He had chosen to take his mandatory one year military conscription in 1938 to get it out of the way before enrolling in medical school. Little did he know world events would change drastically in that year.
After his year was up (he later had to go back to both the eastern and western fronts), he came back to Vienna with his accumulated military pay in his pocket and decided to get a driver’s license. This was quite expensive as it required an extensive theoretical course before hands-on lessons. It’s not like he had even remote prospects of getting a car, which was still quite a rare thing for everyday people, even doctors. In cities they walked to make their home visits or go to the clinic. Or took the tram. But for some reason this is what he really wanted, so he did. And although I never asked what car he learned on, it obviously had a manual transmission.
But he had not driven a manual transmission car for some 26 years. And whereas my father had exceptional abilities in the world of the mind, his practical abilities were the polar opposite. A can opener could present serious challenges to him. He could be borderline “spastic” in some situations; he just didn’t have a feel for mechanical things. A brain in a jar, as some might say. Or in this case, a brain on wheels.
We climbed into the Opel, he started it, played with the shifter a bit and found first gear and then…popped the clutch. That made the little lightweight (1475 lbs) Kadett chirp a rear tire and literally hop forward. But that wasn’t all: instead of just accepting the one rude little chirp and hop and drive on, he reflexively tried (in vain) to correct it by pushing the clutch back in and then…popping it again! And he repeated this about four or five times before he finally realized there was no more need to hop any further down the street. Until the first stop sign. And the next.
Presumably the Kadett’s little clutch was a bit touchier than average, but in his hands feet, he turned it into a genuine hopping frog, with every take-off a little series of hops and skips. Even when he eventually got to the point of not extending the series by pushing the clutch back in and re-popping it, a single pop was enough to make the Opel chirp and hop more than once until its lightly-loaded rear axle settled down to smooth forward propulsion.
After his first hopping demonstration for the assembled family on Colonial Court, my mother laughed and said he had of course bought an Opel Laubfrosch!
The Opel 4 PS was Opel’s first mass-produced car, starting in 1924. Since the first versions were all painted green, it quickly acquired the popular name of Laubfrosch (tree frog). The 4 PS (for its taxable horsepower) was a milestone for both Opel and Germany, as it was the first car built on a Fordian production line, which like the Model T in the US, allowed high volumes and relatively low prices. It was very similar to the Citroen 5 CV, which pioneered the concept (and assembly lines) in Europe a few years earlier. By 1930 it had made Opel the largest car manufacturer in Germany and the reason why GM bought Opel at that time.
I have no idea what car my father drove for his license, but since the Laubfrosch was built through 1931 it’s quite conceivable that it could have been one. I’d like to think so.
Sadly—tragically, actually, as I’ll explain—this is the only picture in the remaining Niedermeyer photo collection that includes the Kadett. It’s in the garage here with the ’65 Coronet wagon. The fetching young lass (and her younger sister in the Dodge) were former neighbors from Iowa visiting. Also in the back seat of the Dodge is my older younger brother Karl (I’m the middle of five). Since he was the only one who stayed in Towson all his life, he ended up with many family heirlooms including a huge number of color slides taken by my father during the 1960s and early 1970s; at some point he suddenly stopped taking any more. Among so many wonderful pictures of family vacations in the Rockies and elsewhere as well as family holidays and such there undoubtedly had to be some of the Kadett photobombing.
Karl had personality aspects—extreme control and anger management issues—that could make him quite challenging, very much so to his family. His wife hung in there until his twin daughter left home and then she bailed. To make a long tragic story short, he was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer a few years later. He was proclaimed “cancer free” ( a dubious and dangerous diagnosis) after his first round of chemo, met a woman in his neighborhood and quite quickly divorced his wife and remarried. Skipping over some details, that led him to pull away and eventually denounce his immediate and extended family as he had now found a new family who truly loved and understood him.
His cancer actually came back just before the wedding, but they proceeded anyway. Despite every possible treatment, within a couple of years he was dying. Instead of any effort to reconcile with his “old” family, he raged ever more against them/us, and among other things, destroyed my father’s trove of the family color slides as well as other family heirlooms that had been entrusted in him. He wouldn’t even let my mother visit him when he was dying in hospice care. His kids have a lot of emotional trauma to still process. And it was very painful for us all, especially my mother.
Since there’s no more photos of our beloved Laubfrosch, here’s some from the brochure and other sources. The Kadett arrived in Germany in 1962 as a very critically-needed small car to compete against the runaway success of the VW Beetle, which had made VW #1 and reduced Opel to the also-ran. It was a very pragmatic design and engineering, with a 993 cc pushrod water cooled inline four, a solid rear axle suspended from leaf springs and a very light but surprisingly roomy body.
It arrived on the German market at almost the exact same time as Ford’s 12M (right), which was Ford’s shot at the Beetle. The 12M, originally conceived in the US as the still-born Cardinal, was larger, heavier and had FWD. The Kadett’s light weight and excellent space efficiency made it more economical than the other two and it handled better to boot. In this showdown between rear engine, FWD and conventional configurations, it’s pretty safe to say that the Kadett won this round, even if it would take a few more years for it to actually unseat the Beetle as the best selling car in Germany.
GM had killed Opel sales in the US in 1960 because of the Corvair and the ’61 B-O-P compacts, but it quickly became all-too obvious that they were not making the slightest dent in the Beetle’s sales. So GM dusted off the old Opel signs and revived the brand, which had been sold by Buick fairly successfully in the 1950s as a captive import during the great import boom. People always ask, why Buick? Why not Chevrolet? Import buyers in the ’50s were more commonly well-educated and more upscale than their prices might suggest. And a low-cost compact Chevrolet had been mulled for years and by 1957, had been funded. So yes, Buick was happy to have an import brand in the ’50s to sell. And why not in the ’60s? There’s money to be made, even if on a somewhat smaller scale.
Although it got off to a fairly slow start, by the late ’60s the Kadett became the #2 selling import in the US, before being dethroned by Toyota. So yes, it had quite a bit of success, until external forces such as exchange rates and the Japanese made it increasingly irrelevant.
And why didn’t my father buy a VW as I suggested? Because he was always cold, and the reputation of the VW’s heater (maligned beyond truth) turned him off, although Baltimore winters were hardly all that cold. And of course because he never took my automotive advice, with one notable exception: a Ford Taurus. Which he loved.
I could come up with several Kadett memories but there’s one very vivid memory (and a small scar on my wrist) that might help in understanding my father a bit better, although it is essentially impossible to really understand his complex personality, strengths and weaknesses without having met him. Stephanie will attest to that. Anyway, as is well known, my father loved the mountains, and moving to Maryland made the Rockies too far away for a family vacation. And quite out of the blue, in the summer of 1966, he announced something utterly unprecedented: that he and I would go on a camping trip together. What!?! He had stated numerous times that he had done a lot more than a lifetime’s share of camping out in WWII and would not even consider that again. Also, he had zero aptitude or experience in recreational camping. So no, this trip did not result in idyllic memories like the one pictured above. Far from it, never mind that my father was even less interested in fishing than camping.
My father loved to read maps and guides and such, and always planned out our vacations. He had been looking at places in the Appalachian Mountains and rather out of the blue decided that he wanted to go to the Dolly Sods (now a wilderness) in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia. But because it was remote, one had to camp in order to access the trails and such. So he decided since I was a Boy Scout, he would take just me along, and turn me into his coolie, porter, cook, and all-round boy servant. Although a part of me was a bit excited there was a palpable sense of anxiety and even dread about the whole thing.
We went to Sunny’s Surplus and bought a very simple, basic tent kind of like this one. And a little folding cot, for him, along with a fat sleeping bag. And few other odds and ends although I had my Boy Scout mess kit for cooking. And somehow we packed up food that was supposed to sustain us for several days, with me doing all the cooking. Which if my father had known how badly I burned everything on those thin aluminum pan and cookpot at our Boy Scout camping trips, he would never have agreed to this. We mostly survived those weekend camping trips thanks to candy bars we hid in our packs.
I was 12 and had had to do everything: set up the tent and his cot, and then attempt to cook supper over an open fire. Let’s just say I’ve long blanked out the details of those meals, but I can’t remove the little scar from my left wrist I got from the hot handle of the cookpot while boiling his water for his instant coffee for breakfast. And a sense of nausea that has suddenly overcome me as I write this. So no, it was not an idyllic scene like the one above. Paul, is supper ready? Paul, is my bed made? Paul, is lunch packed?… Now I really understood what it was like to be my mother—Annie! this; Annie! that…
I have vague memories of hiking through the Dolly Sods, but they are most definitely not the clear, sharp and pleasurable memories like the ones I made in earlier years hiking in the Rockies.
I do have this very clear memory: On the morning of the third day, my father said: Paul, it’s so beautiful here, shall we stay another day? NO!! His boy servant was in revolt, and he could read the tea leaves, so off we went.
We took a different route home, one that took us further south through little Appalachian towns where the locals stared at us in the Kadett. It was my first immersion in Southern culture, such as it was at the time.
Lots of guys either working on their big cars or rumbling through the streets in them. Not an import to be seen anywhere. We were aliens from another planet in our Opel. What the hell is that little thing?
Oddly, I have much more vivid memories of that long drive through the remote parts of West Virginia and Virginia than I do of the Dolly Sods. That may have been reinforced by my father taking us out for a steak dinner at a supper club that evening. That was a highly memorable meal indeed, the first proper one of the whole trip. And topped off by an ice cream sundae. My father redeemed himself to some small degree with that, although I suspect he was every bit as eager for a good meal as I was.
My other prominent Kadett memories involve my older brother who reveled in goading VW drivers into impromptu red light races. The outcome invariably was the opposite as shown in this photo; with its high-winding 46 hp mill and 200 pounds less weight, the 40 hp VW 1200s all went down in defeat. Of course in 1966, the US Beetles all got the much zippier 50 hp 1300 engine, so it paid to know the tell-tale signs of one of those. It would have likely been a tie.
My brother was pretty merciless with the Kadett in these races, revving the engine and letting that clutch out almost as fast as my father, resulting in a surprising amount of actual wheelspin and of course a mighty hop forward. That was essentially impossible in the rear engine VW. And at 80+ mph on the freeway, the Kadett felt like a flying tin can. Its lightweight construction made itself felt, especially in seeing a little gap of sky opening up at the top of the window frame as the negative pressure there sucked it away from the body.
After only three years, the Kadett’s hard-working little engine showed distinct signs of fatigue. The diagnosis and remedy was a valve job, due to burned exhaust valves. Hmm…wonder what could have caused that? Thomas, are you driving the Kadett appropriately?
My father paid the bill, but he was over it. Not long after he drove off with the Opel one Saturday and came home with a baby-shit stripper ’68 Dodge Dart. Good luck damaging the slant six in that, Thomas! Around this time my brother bought his ill-fated MGA, so I don’t remember him driving the Dart. It was safe in Papa’s hands, briefly at least until I started driving it, illicitly. I regret never having driven the Kadett. It would have suited me, being tall and narrow and light and small and economical.
I’m hardly the only one who has a thing for these Kadett A’s. Richard Hammond found one in Botswana (or so the story makes it seem, but you never know with Top Gear) and fell in love with it and named it Oliver and took it home. And that was just the beginning of a long love affair between the two.
Yes, I’d be quite happy to stumble into one just like Oliver, and finally experience driving a genuine Laubfrosch. And of course making it hop.
Related CC reading:
Vintage Car Life Road Test: 1964 Opel Kadett – The Anti-Beetle by me
COAL: 1965 Opel Kadett L – Training Wheels by RichP
Auto-Biography: 1968 Dodge Dart 170 Two-Door Sedan – The Neurologist’s Car Of Choice by me
Curbside Classic: 1966 – 1973 Opel Kadett (B) – It Dethroned The Volkswagen by me
During the 1970s fuel crisis, I convinced Dad to sell Mom’s Mustang and get an 1100cc stripper Kadett, 4 speed. A shifter as long as Volvo Amazon. Cardboard door panels, very basic. It threw a rod going downhill on a long sweeper, no stress on it other than being severely under powered.
Reall a # of “Kadett”, sightings/encounters. Neighbors had a red, wagon (“66”, I believe) for about “2” years.
A red “Vdub”, bug, “69”, replaced it.
Your dad appears a bit “dressed up” to be relaxing in the mud.
Yes, that’s how he used to dress for Sunday afternoon hikes. A few years later he finally started wearing blue jeans. What a shocker that was! And then the dress shoes gave way to hiking boots and such. It was a slow progression…
I spent many hours looking at the Electras and Rivieras in the “old” Brooks Buick at York & Washington, usually followed by a visit to Gino’s a block away (the Gino Giant to this day is my favorite burger ever!).
Years later we bought our used ’72 Skylark 4 dr at their “new” Brooks Buick down the hill at Kenilworth off York. The birth of our first child (now almost 50!) required a safe and practical car, and the Skylark went on to be a great one. We’d never have put her in that Opel, they just seemed incredibly tinny (and tiny) to me.
“Tinny” is the “operative”, word here. I was surprised, I recall, @ how “flimsy”, the “Vdubs” I was in didn’t feel. (later in years when I noticed such things. The “poor excuse for heat” always turned me off though.))
A fun and touching story. My dad and I were polar opposite people. He grew up in the country where every boy loved fishing, hunting, camping and all things sports. Well, I’m none of those! I couldn’t tell you one thing about any sport, we camped exactly one time and I slept in the car, and I don’t even like fish (I have major seafood allergies!)
And how sad about your brother. I have one sister who has all our family photos and if I’m willing to just drive out to South Dakota she’ll happily let me have them! (Uh, yea with almost having died in November then having heart issues including, doctors tell me, at least one heart attack, those photos will just be a memory)
I knew cars-lots about cars-and he didn’t! He once told a fellow that his 1976 Cadillac had a 490 engine! He got that number from combining the 390 in his 67 Country Squire and the 400 in my sister’s LTD (uh oh-two of your favs!)
But alas, he came to me in 1978 and wanted my opinion on all the newly downsized GM biggies (did I stumble upon a deadly sin?!)
I chose the Electra for him and he was pleased.
At the end, I worried about having to take his keys away as his years of driving had finally found an end. But he didn’t make me do the inevitable-no he proudly handed me the keys to his 85 Camry in 91 saying that he just wanted me to leave the car so he could still see it.
He died shortly after that. A great story. I’ve never driven an Opel but have seen a few at car shows.
That Kadett , apart from the front but especially the glass area, is so like the Vauxhall Viva HA of the same era – both being GM I daresay it’s no accident
It certainly was not an accident. The Viva HA was essentially a carbon copy Kadett but converted to non-metric standards and some relevant changes, including the styling.Full story here:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/the-corporation-the-story-of-my-father-a-gm-executive-part-3-viva-russelsheim/
My only experience with a Kadett (or any other Opel) came in 1981, when a school buddy acquired a very used-and-abused 1973 that had passed down from his parents through several older siblings. It’s not clear how the car managed to pass NY state safety inspections. Parts were getting difficult to obtain. Somehow that car kept going, despite all that.
Thank you for another wonderful story, Paul. Reading about your father brought back memories of my own. We left Montreal in 1976 and the height of anti-English sentiment. Neighbours literally turned on each other. Anyway, we ended up in a rambling farmhouse on Vancouver Island, which was right next door to dad’s job with BC Hydro. Dad actually left this job to go into the taxi business, but that is a different story.
Anyway, said house was heated by furnace oil. Dad hated buying any kind of oil product, so he got the idea to save money with a wood burning furnace. Yes, he saved so much money by having to buy a truck to haul the wood. Added to the cost was the saw and various PPE. The problem here was I was doing all the work. I’d fall a tree, limb it and then buck it up. Before it went into the truck it was split. Dad supervised while I worked like a dog.
This was okay (sort of) when I was fourteen, but by sixteen I began to realise that Dad was working me without pay, “to earn my keep” as he termed it. He sold me his 1974 Corolla and ripped me off in the process. I stared working for the local farmers, being paid a decent wage at the time. Dad was livid that his free labour was gone. I responded by moving in with a friend.
This was in the summer before grade 12 and my mom was concerned about my grades and goaded me into coming back home. As Dad no longer had his free labour supply, he sold the farmhouse and bought a rambling home in Crofton BC. The truck went, too and said rambling house was heated with electricity, the most expensive method of home heating.
Dad was complex man. He lost his own father in a workplace accident when he was only nine years old. It left a lasting impression on him, that he never got over.
I grew up on a dairy farm with 4 brothers. Our tale is similar to yours. We are all senior citizens now. Our father made us do the most dangerous jobs which he avoided. On top of it the kids in town were working at the grocery store and buying nice Camaro’s and Mustang’s while we had nothing.
The whole “earning your keep” thing must have come out of the depression.
Another lovely story – thank you.
Here’s the Kadett being put through its paces in a typically thorough Autotest from German TV. It seemed not to like the extreme cold and wet very much, but otherwise did pretty well. The car’s lightness meant that it could stop in a shorter than average distance and they thought its fuel economy was good at 8L/100km (29 US MPG).
Ah! Thank you for this. In his home country, the TV car reviews featuring Rainer Günzler (rallye driver and automotive journalist) are legendary.
The testing methods were refined over the years; however, the key evaluation criteria remained essentially the same right up until the programs were discontinued in 1977 (following Rainer Günzler’s death).
Incidentally, the footage was filmed at the Mercedes-Benz test track in Stuttgart.
In Canada we generally received Vauxhalls instead of Opels from GM, so I have no experience with these. I was surprised to see that the tops of the doors would bend out at highway speeds. This also happens to my Citroën 2CV, but its doors are so flimsy they bend when you open them. Th Kadett looks more substantial, but evidently not.
Great write-up, as per usual. It seems that Niedermeyer sr. created a ‘Bonanza-Effekt’ of his own.
During the oil crisis of 1973–74, the tiny one-liter engine from the Kadett A was revived for the Kadett C—as a so-called “economy version” for cheapskates.
Did this low-compression micro-mill actually save fuel in the significantly heavier Kadett C? One has reason to doubt it. Nevertheless, the thing was indeed purchased by quite a few people.
I’m still daily driving a B series Kadett sedan when the salt is off the road. Total stripper but it is all the car I need. 1.1R engine which gives you the twin carbs from the RS but not the higher compression pistons. It was rated at 60hp. Total buzz bomb with 13″ tires and 4:11 rear gears. Highway cruising is 4000-5000rpm. Quite happily too.It did the door thing at first, I don’t know what changed but it doesn’t do it anymore. The Kadett A and B series have a distinct feel that I love. Manta A also. Needless to say that I am extremely disappointed in what Opel has become today.
I really, really would like you to do a bit of a write up on your Kadett. You know you are almost certainly the only one in the country still driving one of these regularly. Just need some pictures and a bit of a back story.
Please!
This was a fun read Paul, other than the sad story of your younger brother Karl (and the loss of all of those slides). I imagine his deciding to remain in Towson didn’t help him, unlike you and your older siblings that left the family home as soon as you became adults.
I’m curious as to the route your father took on the way back from Dolly Sods. I would think that US Route 33 or even US 250 might have been used; in either case, you wouldn’t have passed far from Charlottesville, Virginia, where I now reside.
I don’t recall ever seeing the generation of Opel Kadett that your father purchased, but the following generation was common in the Pittsburgh area where I grew up. My wife had one as her first car, a hand-me-down from her mom, who used it as a commuter.
Agreed about Karl. It’s a long and not very happy life story in a number of ways.
I can’t remember exactly the route, but it did make a rather bigger loop to the east, and it’s quite likely Charlottesville was part of it.
Had been waiting for this chapter!
My high scool chum and I test drove a new Kadett in 1965 and thought it was just dandy. They were slightly over priced in Oregon that year. My family ended up buying a Corvair 500 4 door and his mother got a Cutlass coupe with 330 V8 to tow their travel trailer. I later repaired a generation newer Kadett wagon with a seized engine and found removal required it to be lowered out of the car.