Recently I’ve been filing up with dash-cam captures, and it’s about time I shared them with you. I’ll start from the most orange of oranges.
This one is extremely rare in Israel, and maybe the only one of its kind in the country:
As this was the first and only time I’ve seen a Rekord P1 in Israel (to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of these at all before), it would come as no surprise that I’d mistaken it for something else, although I wasn’t far off – I recognized it for a Vauxhall at first.
License plate tells me this car was imported into Israel back when new, and because it has five digits, it must be of a 1957-1959 vintage (Israel turned to six digit plates in 1960) This makes it one of the few, if not an only survivor of its kind. So no further photos available from me, sorry.
I don’t like these cars.
When I was a toddler, I was standing on the transmission hump of a 1959 Opel similar to this one, when it was broadsided while my father was driving through an intersection in Chicago. I was tossed across the back and my face struck the rear door behind my mother, who was riding in the front seat. Fortunately, I was the only one injured and it resulted with me getting a bruised face with a lip laceration that also loosened a new baby tooth.
So, now you know why I’ve never liked this car. I should probably get over it but, I was told that it was a damn fine tooth.
Nice catch! I’ve long hoped to find a survivor P1 in the US, as they were fairly popular during the great import boom in the late 50s. I used to see some around into the 70s, especially in California, where the rust didn’t get them. But it’s been decades. I wonder how many are still left in the US.
In my opinion, the ‘descendants’ of these cars, the late 1960s Opel Rekord, may well be the most reliable ‘standard’ (that means non-luxury, so that excludes Mercedes W114 and W123) cars ever made.
I rode in one that had 400-500k on it, and another that had over 200k.
I find it somewhat hard to believe, which is based on my experience with and the reputation of 1970s to 1990s and 2000s Opel’s.
The mechanicals could be reasonably reliable (still less reliable and long-lasting than anything else German-made – hence the popular nickname for Opel, “the German Moskvitch”) for a budget car (depends on whether you count Opel as a budget car; in 1950s, before the Japanese, Korean & Eastern block imports, it probably was), but the bodies were destroyed by rust in the first 10 years or less. The same goes for the German Fords, to some extent, but the engines and the transmissions are for the most part indestructible, at least, and the cars themselves had (and still have) a more “upmarket” feel about them.
All Opels I’ve seen had a “cheep”, low quality, look and feel compared to contemporary VWs and European Fords, and the same goes for the mechanicals as well.
Of course, things could’ve been quite different in 1950s & 60s, before VW’s marriages with AutoUnion and NSU…
500 000 miles on the original engine sounds really impressive; 200 000 IMO is what any decent car can manage without major repairs if properly maintained and not abused (e.g. the Soviet Fiat 124 clones regularly did just that).
A Buick that’s been left in the dryer a little too long.
P1 Rekords were good sellers here in Uruguay , as were the following models. As my car memories begin about 1972, the fact the I remember them so well attests to the high price of any car here, as well as that they were well built. There were at least two trim levels, and 4 doors were quite common. The upper level (I remember them with an Olympia badge, but I’m not sure it’s indicative of the trim) was always two tone, with the top in white, as the one you shot. All were imported with1500 engines, save for the blind vans, which (if I remember correctly) had 1200s
For many years the classic car market in Uruguay was something like a “dream come true” to many Brazilian collectors, a huge variety with reasonable prices.
How is it now a days?
They also sold reasonably well in Israel but rust killed a lot of them.
My German-born father had a black 1958 Rekord from around 1963 until 1970 – by that time it felt ancient!
He bought a new 1970 Chevrolet Opala (the Brazilian cousin of Rekord C) and stated that the Brazilian-made car didn’t have the built quality of the Opel and by no means it would last 12 years, and sure enough, around 1974 the Opala was already badly rusted had to be sold.
Nice catch.
There’s at least one of them in my part of Wisconsin.
I had one of these, a -59 Rekord Olympia as a winther beater in the late 90’s, while my dad at the time had a 1996 Vectra, which I believe could be considered a direct descendant.
What baffled me, was that basic suspension comfort, spaciousness and room, was no better on the -96. Of course everything was digital and electronically controlled, updated switchgear and whatnot, but in the big picture, the old one was just as good, if not better in some regards.
Slightly off topic, but in addition to an apparent abundance of unique cars, the roads in Israel look really nice and well cared for compared to American roads.