A look back to the days when this German brand was a key feeder of Holden ambition.

BEST known as the German brand that once fed vital cars into the Holden sales strategy, Opel’s resurgence in June will be a third time pitch to gain Kiwi attention.

However, having at the spearhead this time some electric fare could give it a new lease of life.

That the e-Corsa could be most important has historic relevance. The car is a battery-committed modern equivalent of the small city-specific hatch often labelled Barina that was at the forefront of two previous campaigns, when it was a General Motors’ asset.

Actually, asset is the wrong word. In the latter part of its 88-year GM ownership, Opel was a $NZ30 billion millstone.

However, since becoming part of the Peugeot-Citroen portfolio in 2017, when it was sold for around $NZ3 billion, Opel has risen back to decent health. Today it is now focussing on mainly electric-prioritised products.

Opel product has mainly sold with the Holden badge until now, though there was a period when the original Vectra sedan (above), coupe and wagon of the 1990s’ direct-represented for Russelsheim, before production of further generations switched to Holden’s Adelaide plant.

GM off-loading Opel to PSA in August 2017 as part of a fire sale of money-losing assets came when the Germans were early into supplying the ZB Commodore.

Holden quickly wangled an agreement with Groupe PSA to supply the Commodore, and BK Astra, for five years after Australian production ceased in 2017.

There were questions about the ultimate outcome, with PSA making clear it wanted to shift the both from GM-supplied mechanicals to their own. Not good news for the V6 that was built in Australia and shipped to Europe.

Of course, all this became a semantic when GM announced at the start of 2020 that Holden was being shut down. In June of that year, PSA merged with Fiat-Chrysler-Jeep and Stellantis was subsequently born.

The Insignia also represented directly here for a short time, arriving in 2016 as the top dog of the VXR performance sub-brand. With a particularly clever all-wheel-drive and a twin turbo 239kW/435Nm V6, thst variant (below) stood as an intriguing alternate to the SV6 and SS V8 Commodore, and showed them up by offering adaptive cruise control, auto emergency braking and lane change alert. All technologies not in the Holden portfolio. But it was expensive and never caught on. VXR Astras hung around until almost Holden sales completely wrapped up.

The make also designed and often supplied the Vectra, a host of Astras, Barinas, the Zafira people carrier – often in the same or highly similar representations they had as British market Vauxhalls - and also had an indirect hand in the Pontiac Le Mans, in that it was an Opel Kadett (the precursor to the Astra) re-engineered in South Korea by Daewoo, then an independent with GM ties. Another curiosity was the Cascada convertible.

The first big Opel tilts were with the Corsa, as a Barina between 1994 and 2005 (that car having begun local circulation as a rebadged Suzuki Swift) and the Vectra of 1990.

The latter was a huge pitch item that captured national attention. Particularly when ‘try your luck’ plastic keys sent out to one million Kiwi families for a multi-car giveaway, the biggest direct mail exercise ever carried out in the country, didn’t work as planned.

Soured exchange rates saw Opel’s southern hemisphere involvement end for a decade, then it returned in 2012; one venture then being Holden Special Vehicles involving, again for a short time, with an Astra GTC coupe developed by the OPC (Opel Performance Centre) speed division. Those models subsequently became regular Holdens.