Based on the compact Opel Kadett, but looking like a miniature C3 Corvette, the Opel GT offered decent performance and exotic looks for under $3,500, with the promise of easy service at Buick dealerships. It sounded like a sure winner, but when Car Life tried the Opel GT in June 1969, they had mixed feelings.
The relationship between Buick and Opel went back to the recession of 1957–1958, when desperate Buick dealers signed up to sell the German-made Opel Olympia Rekord. After the late ’50s import craze had cooled, some Buick dealers let their Opel franchises lapse, but interest increased in the late ’60s. As of January 1, 1969, 1,872 Buick dealers had Opel franchises; by July 1, that number that had grown to 1,933.

Buick didn’t import the larger Opel models, so until the Opel GT arrived in the spring of 1969, their sole Opel product was the compact Kadett. Although the Kadett B looked like a miniature Chevelle and offered surprisingly good performance in 1.9-liter Rallye form, the Opel GT promised a new kind of style and excitement.

Car Life began:
WHAT’S AN OPEL GT? It’s the Mini-Brute’s Mini-Vette. It’s a 1.9-liter sports car from Opel, GM’s German subsidiary. It’s a low cost, medium-performance GT car sold by America’s huge Buick dealer organization. It’s GM’s bid in the lucrative low-price sports car market currently being dominated by Datsun, Triumph, MG, Fiat, et al.
But to many Americans, it’s going to be “Buick’s new sports car.” More importantly—to its owners—it will be not only a car that will handle as well as the competition in its price range (roughly $3500 loaded), it offers two extras not necessarily available from the others—distinctive style, plus service and parts as near as your local Buick dealer.
The “Mini-Brute” was how Buick advertised the Opel Kadett, as seen in this 1968 magazine ad:
The Opel GT, the production version of a concept car first shown several years earlier, was closely based on the contemporary Kadett, albeit with a relocated engine and racy new styling. Like the Kadett, its Chevrolet flavor was not coincidental: The GT project, which originated in Erhard Schnell’s Opel advanced studio, was originally overseen by former Chevrolet chief stylist Clare MacKichan and finalized under Chuck Jordan, who succeeded MacKichan as head of the Opel design studio in 1967. Although contemporary reviewers inevitably compared the GT to the C3 Corvette, the stylistic inspiration was actually a 1962 Corvair concept car, the XP-777 Corvair Monza GT.


The photo captions on this page read: “HANDLING was nimble and responsive at moderate speeds, but cornering near the limit of adhesion revealed too much understeer and rear wheel lifting.”


“LARGE DOORS and roomy interior put GT a cut above most sports cars. Instrument panel was stylish yet logical; center dials angle toward driver.”

“SPUNKY 102-bhp engine has been moved back several inches and valve cover chopped as concession to GT hood. Note casual cold air package, front mounted brake booster (upper center).”

“NO trunk, à la Corvette, but luggage area is larger and easier to reach than ‘Vette’s.”

Car Life admitted they had been ambivalent about the GT since its show circuit appearances:
Pretty, certainly, but we had our doubts about the worthiness of the engine and chassis, even though the Rallye Kadett we tested (December, 1968) was impressive in both the performance and handling departments for an economy sedan.
But rebodying the Kadett, we felt, would not make a very sophisticated sports car. To our surprise, Opel has done essentially that (plus detail changes), and has come up with a nice integration of power, handling, size and style. The basic chassis is that of the Kadett. The engine has been moved back roughly 12 in. [actually 15.75 in.]; the passenger compartment was shifted to the rear a proportional amount; and the smoother, lower body was added. This brings down the center of gravity (the Kadett felt very tippy) and allows the axle ratio to be lowered numerically due to the lowered drag.
The standard engine in the Opel GT was the 1,078cc (65.8-cid) OHV four from the base Kadett, with 67 gross horsepower (60 DIN-PS). I’ve never been sure why, since demand for the smaller engine was minimal even in Europe. Most buyers paid the modest premium ($99 on U.S. cars) for the 1,897cc (115.8-cid) CIH (cam-in-head) engine from the Rallye Kadett, which had a healthier 102 gross horsepower (90 DIN-PS) and much better performance. Only 3.5 percent of all GTs had the 1100 engine, which was dropped after the 1970 model year.

The Car Life car inevitably had the 1900 engine, whose performance was very strong for a sub-2-liter engine of this era:
Our test car, with this engine and the standard four-speed transmission, came off on the specification sheet as a carbon of the Rallye Kadett previously tested. Only the rear axle ratio (3.44:1 vs. 3.67:1 on the sedan), and tire size, are different (165-13 radials on the GT, 155-13 on the sedan).
However, differences not apparent on paper are quickly obvious at the test track. Quarter-mile times are nearly a second quicker and five miles per hour faster. Top speed, 111 mph, is better by 10 mph over the sedan. Braking is slightly better, and handling is vastly improved with the lower center of gravity. We’re not exactly sure where this extra performance came from. The engine is supposed to be the same. Only readily apparent inducements for quicker acceleration is 100-rpm higher redline (6000 rpm), slightly larger section tires and a very grippy clutch. It could be moved off the line very smartly, with just a whisper of wheelspin. Snap shifts were easy and the clutch and tire grip were good enough to send a judder of torque throughout the car. The slippery shape helped on the top end.
The Opel GT had a drag coefficient of about 0.39, pretty good for the late ’60s.
The GT’s retractable headlights were operated by a mechanical lever and rolled sideways to open. They were not terribly attractive when raised:
The caption of the bottom photo reads, “ANY DOUBT about its ancestry? Though not an exact replica, the GT does borrow several styling details from the Corvette, especially the nose and tail treatments. It got more curious stares than the Improbables.”


Although the Opel GT had very good straight-line performance — 10.2 seconds 0 to 60 was better than some V-8 sedans could manage — Car Life had some complaints about the powertrain:
We still don’t like the transmission ratios. First and second, and third and fourth are closely spaced, leaving a knee-buckling drop between second and third. This not only has its disadvantages in acceleration, but often one is left without a proper gear for certain corners, where the choice is lugging around in third, or buzzing along well past the power peak in second. Thankfully, the GT has been spared the horrendous fan noise of the sedan. The higher rear axle gearing reduces the engine speed for corresponding road speed, and more attention was paid to internal aerodynamics allowing a smaller and slower radiator fan. The noise is still there, more than we would like or are used to in domestic cars; but at least it doesn’t drive the passengers out of the car.
The four-speeds used in the Opel GT 1100 and 1900 actually had different ratios, but both had the same big gap between 2nd and 3rd (ratios in the 1900 were 2.156 in 2nd, 1.366 in 3rd), which hurt performance.

Opel didn’t offer four-wheel disc brakes for the GT, but the standard disc/drum brakes performed well: Car Life managed almost 1 g deceleration from 80 mph (31 feet/sec./sec.), better than almost any U.S. production car could manage.
The photo at the top left, which is split over this and the facing page, shows the GT on a course prepared by Bob Bondurant; the caption reads, “OPEL has its moment on competition driving school course. GT could stay with novices in prepared Datsuns, but had to be hung out to do it.”

The text explained:
We took the opportunity to evaluate the handling of the GT on both a very tight slalom course and on high-speed mountain roads, all on the same day. Bob Bondurant’s School of High Performance driving was operating at Orange County Raceway on test day and we got permission from the instructor to lap the tight course with his students in Datsun 2000s. After a few laps we began to get the feel of it and we (a) surprised even ourselves, (b) watched the instructor’s sneaky grin turn into a frown when we started catching his students, and (c) found the GT’s two worst faults.
Later, in the mountains, we reaffirmed what we suspected on the test track: Heavy initial understeer and rear wheel lifting. For easy “fun” driving around the neighborhood, the car seems nimble and reasonably responsive, but out at the limit, the car feels unpredictable and lacks real cornering power.
Car Life was annoyed that the heavy-duty suspension with rear anti-roll bar and limited-slip differential that had been described in the original launch press release was nowhere to be found on the options list for the U.S. Opel GT, although that equipment was available in other markets. U.S. options included a rear defogger, automatic transmission (the three-speed TH180), a vinyl roof (which I’ve never seen and sounds awful), and eventually factory air conditioning.

As the data panel reveals, the 1969 Opel GT had a base price of $3,395, with the 1900 engine adding $99 and the rear defroster $19. A radio was standard, while automatic transmission was $190.
The photo caption reads, “DISAPPOINTING weigh-in revealed a slightly heavier curb weight and worse distribution than sedan.” Their test car weighed 2,070 lb, and weight distribution with the test crew was 55/45.

Although the Opel GT was a two-seater with no exterior trunk opening, Car Life found it comfortable and reasonably civilized:
Inside, the Opel has one of the better people packages of the sports and GT car world. The larger members of our staff found entrance and egress better than the Corvette and most imports. The large door, which opens high (for once the stylist lost to the comfort engineers), wide (some 43 inches, close to a full-size sedan) and handsome (stylist didn’t lose all the battles). Door location relative to the seat is also good. The large seats are comfortable and pretty fair buckets. The rest of the interior is plush, logical and roomy. Dash has the tach and speedometer where it counts, and easily read engine instruments on the center section.
The GT came with full instrumentation, including a tachometer and an improbable 150-mph speedometer, but the CL editors were puzzled by the symbol for the rear defroster, which was the now-familiar heated rear window type.

Here are some performance highlights from the data panel:
- 0 to 30 mph: 3.3 sec.
- 0 to 60 mph: 10.2 sec.
- 0 to 100 mph: 39.6 sec.
- Standing quarter mile: 17.4 secs. at 79 mph
They recorded an actual top speed of 111 mph at 5,800 rpm and a test average of 17.6 mpg. When not being wrung out on the drag strip or the slalom course, they estimated the Opel GT was good for up to 26 mpg. Although the 1900 CIH engine had a relatively modest 9.0 compression ratio, it required premium fuel.

Buick ended up selling 11,880 Opel GTs in the U.S. for 1969, followed by 21,240 for 1970, but interest faded after that, and U.S. sales never again topped 14,000 cars a year. Buick had missed their window for establishing the GT as a credible sports car — I don’t know why they chickened out on the handling package, but the buff books clearly held it against them — and the Opel would soon be caught between the Datsun 240Z and its own Opel 1900 (Manta A) cousin, as well as the Ford Capri and eventually the Toyota Celica. The Manta, Capri, and Celica were more practical, while the 240Z offered much better performance for very little more money.

There was nothing really wrong with the GT, but it also had no outstanding virtues other than its swoopy styling (which has always reminded me a bit of a Min Pin, a cat-size dog bred to look like a miniature Doberman Pinscher), and against such formidable opposition, that wasn’t enough. Production ended in August 1973 — the final total was 103,373 cars, of which 70,251 were sold in the U.S.
Related Reading
Automotive History: The Opel GT. 1968-1973 – The Long Road From Inspiration To Production with Many Cooks Adding to the Broth Along The Way (by geelongvic)
Vintage C&D Review: Opel GT 1.9 – The First Lutz-Mobile (by Paul N)
Vintage R&T $3500 GT Comparison Test, July 1971: Opel GT & Datsun 240Z — When the Land Of The Rising Sun Eclipsed The Old European Order. (by geelongvic)
Vintage R&T Comparison: 1967 Opel Kadett Rallye & Ford Cortina GT – Mini Muscle Cars (by Paul N)
The 1078 (1100) motor was an overhead valve unit rather than CIH.
A gold GT served as Maxwell Smart’s ride in the final season of TV’s Get Smart.
GTs were built by an outside contractor in France, IIRC, as the projected volume was thought too small for a works, in-house build.
Oops, quite right. I’ve corrected the text.
Production of the body was contracted to Brissonneau et Lotz, which had undercut Karmann’s bid. However, completed body shells were then shipped back to the Opel factory in Bochum for final assembly.
Please allow me to point out that there are conflicting statements on this.
According to Jan-Henrik Muche’s “Opel GT Buch” (Opel GT Book), the following is said to apply:
The body was manufactured by Chausson in Gennevilliers (France), while Brissonneau & Lotz in Creil (France) handled the paint and interior. The finished bodies were delivered to the Opel plant in Bochum (Germany), where they received the engine, transmission, and axles (cf. Muche, page 48 f.). This largely corresponds to the information on the Opel GT in German Wikipedia. However, according to the Wikipedia entry, the interior was also supposedly done in Bochum.
May be both are correct. Perhaps a question of timing and respective capacities.
Chausson did the stamping and welding as a subcontractor to Brissonneau et Lotz. Brissonneau et Lotz had been trying to get a deal with Opel for a while, and they aggressively underbid Karmann.
Ah, thanks! So things fit together.
“… demand for the smaller engine was minimal even in Europe.”
Not really surprising. The GT 1100 wasn’t just problematic due to its meager 60 hp. Much more annoying in everyday driving was the 1100 engine’s low torque of just 85 Nm at 3800 rpm (interested readers accustomed to imperial units may do the conversion themselves). The 1900 engine delivered 149 Nm at 2500 rpm. The GT 1100 was so underpowered that it even was known for consuming more fuel than the GT 1900.
Added to this was a poor equipment: rubber mats instead of carpeting, windshield cleaning via a rubber-bellow foot pump, simplified instrumentation and sweat-inducing vinyl seat covers instead of perforated vinyl (similar to MB-Tex) or fabric.
Despite all this, the Opel 1100 GT was not a cheap car in its home country. When it was launched in 1968, Opel charged DM 10 800 in Germany. For that price, you got a vehicle that, aside from looking good, didn’t really do much.
For comparison (base prices in Germany in 1968):
BMW 1600-2 : DM 10 900
Mercedes-Benz 200 D (W 115) : DM 10 990
Ford Taunus 20 M P5 2,0 l * : DM 11 350
Mercedes-Benz 230 (W 115) * : DM 11 600
Opel Commodore A 2.5 S Coupé* : DM 12 490
* = Vehicles with a six-cylinder engine
Anyone who was able to shop in this price range would generally have been willing and able to pay the premium for the GT 1900 (price in 1968: from DM 11 800).
I’ve often wondered what the buying process was like when someone wanted to buy a small sports (or economy) car, when they walked into a dealership and encountered a salesman who really wanted to sell you a Wildcat or Riviera.
If you walked into a Buick-Opel dealer and asked to look at an Opel, the salesman showed you one. They were usually smart enough to know that the odds of you ending up buying a Riviera were essentially nil.
Don’t forget that Opel was the #2 selling import brand at the time behind VW; Buick-Opel salesmen were making good money selling them.
I went with my father to Brooks Buick-Opel in Towson in 1965 when he went to buy a Kadett. They showed it to him and then they sat down and wrote up the deal. Why risk turning off a potential customer?
Like every fisherman, every good salesman knows that the worm has to taste good to the f i s h…
Buick dealers had to sign up for an Opel franchise (and by the time were doing so in rapidly increasing numbers), so Opel wasn’t something GM had just foisted on unwilling salespeople. U.S. Opel sales went from about 51K in 1967 to 80K to over 91K in 1969, and got Buick dealers customers who wouldn’t have been interested in a LeSabre or a Wildcat.
I don’t imagine that a potential Opel buyer would have cross-shopped the Opel with any Buick that was offered for sale in the 1960s or 1970s. But I do imagine that Buick-Opel dealers managed to sell a few Opel as second or third cars for a spouse or a teen-aged driver in the family.
” But I do imagine that Buick-Opel dealers managed to sell a few Opel as second or third cars for a spouse or a teen-aged driver in the family.”
You’re absolutely right, I think. That’s why they placed them with Buick—and not Chevrolet. Buick customers had the financial strength for something like that.
That’s not how it worked. In 1957, when midprice U.S. car sales sank because of bad economic conditions, Buick was hit especially hard — they lost more than half their previous volume — and none of their big cars were selling well at all. Buick dealers panicked, saying that the only thing people seemed to be buying were imported compacts. So, GM gave Buick dealers the opportunity to sign up to sell imported Opel Olympia Rekords. Oldsmobile and Chevrolet didn’t see the need (and I think Ed Cole at Chevrolet didn’t want to risk undermining his Corvair project), but Pontiac dealers were given the option to sell Vauxhalls at the same time, for the same reason.
Pontiac was not happy with Vauxhall, since the imported English cars were not reliable or really suited to American roads, and gave up after 1960 in favor of the Tempest. Buick did okay with Opel for a while, selling close to 40,000 cars in 1959. Once they had the smaller Buick Special/Skylark, some dealers who previously had signed up for Opel franchises let them lapse, but some kept at it, and others still had the option to pick up Opel if they wanted. The number of Opel franchise holders began to grow again after the arrival of the Kadett, and doubled following the arrival of the Kadett B.
So, your last statement is exactly the opposite of how it came about: Opel was paired with Buick originally because Buick dealers were having a hard time selling its big cars and wanted something, anything, that could actually sell. Also, as I said above, Buick dealers had to sign up for an Opel franchise, which some did and some didn’t. It was not a command decision from GM based on some merchandising strategy about Buick selling second or third cars to Electra 225 owners.
Ford offered English Ford franchises to its U.S. dealers on a similar basis, although there were never as many: In the late ’60s, around 800 U.S. Ford dealers had English Ford franchises to sell the Mk2 Cortina.
Yeah, likely not: There was about $500 between a Kadett and the cheapest six-cylinder Special, which was a big jump at that time.
@ Aaron Severson, posted September 19, 2025 at 12:30 AM
First of all, thank you very much for these comments. The historical facts are unquestionable. However, my comment was more focused on the era of the Opel Kadett B and the Opel GT (and perhaps also the Opel 1900). So, roughly from 1967 until the end of Opel imports.
My Buick Division Daddy brought several of these home, including a sharp green/tan one we kept for a while. Favorite memory: while waiting for whichever parental unit to return from whatever store we were parked in front of, sometimes a curious person would stop and take a long look. Then I’d slam the headlight lever forward. They didn’t jump out of their socks but they were pretty hysterically surprised.
& then along came the 240Z.
When I first saw an Opel GT I was really impressed with the styling and good performance numbers. That said, the car was very rare in Canada. I had an acquaintance who owned a non-runner, parked outside his house. He never did get it running.
I worked for Ehrhard Schnell, the Cheif Designer of the GT and later met designer Wolfgang Moebius at Porsche. Moebius went on to design the 928 and other Porsches under Tony Lapine, who had worked on the Q and C2 Corvettes.
I later had one of these in metallic light blue. It had wider 15″ ATS alloys which filled out the arches and gave it a more confident stance. The 1900 ran strong, but wasn’t that refined. High speeds were achievable due to the low drag and frontal area. 180km/h was easily reached on the ‘Bahn and it handled predictably. The driving position was great and the rotating headlamps hilarious, despite needing a hefty shove on the lever. When they locket into place the whole car rocked!
I didn’t have it long, as rust was present, but would have another if I could.
Many of these were re-engined with the famed Kadett GSi 2 liter16v motor – 150bhp as standard and a rev to the skies nature suiting a sports car.
Stopping by my local Buick dealer’s parts department in 1982 (Gaylin Buick), the man behind the counter had a chuckle when I inquired about some bits for my 71 Opel 1900 fastback. All had gone into the dumpster years back due to lack of interest.
The 240z dethroned more than a few little sports cars. I always thought these were cute, like a little Hot Wheels car.
Here is a vinyl roof from opelgt.com
Yeah, that is not flattering.
More like a GT landaulet than a GT with a vinyl roof [laughter].
And a rear view.
I normally like vinyl roof’s, but I would have to pass on this one.
My almost brother in law had an orange GT with the “big engine”, and while it was a fun car, it was pretty uncomfortable for anyone who was on the larger side. I was only 14 when he got it, and already built like a Gorilla, and I remember it just being too narrow for my shoulders. Foot room was barely ok, but when I sat in one years later, my size 13.5’s had no room to go anywhere with the basketball shoes I was wearing. He only had the car for a couple of years, it already had some pretty bad rust around the back wheel openings by then, and he wanted something with more legroom. He replaced it with a ’71 Impala that had the 307 in it.
Cute ! .
I remember these mostly being brown in color .
I had a friend who developed a convertible kit for these in the 1980’s, he’d buy an old long sitting car for $250 ~ $500 and chop the top off, reinforce the lower body, paint and trim it and sell to Germans for silly money at the time .
I’m glad Huey mentioned the vastly more powerful 2 liter engine, one could buy it new very affordably at that time in Europe, crate it and declare “used engine for parts” and U.S. Customs didn’t ever seem to open the crate .
*Very* fast with that engine and adding a sway bar helped a lot too .
-Nate