Opel Commodore C

[Calaber]

Yep. definite family resemblance, particularly to the HR, but I reckon the HR was a much neater design. The Opel front is clumsy.

 

[308vkcalais]

A lot of close lookers in here.Nothing like a bit of automotive incest..
The old blue goon on the car trailer has the horrible looks/stlye lines of an old FB/K.The little red & black striped thing on pg 3 looks like a little HB banana..

 

[Wesuri]

Well the family or corporate resemblance is no surprise. GM had a design department that gave the big lines and local studios then made some localisations to it.

Opel's A-series Kapitän, Admiral and Diplomat looks very good imo but the progress went on and when Opel revealed the more modern C-Rekord design, the A-series K.A.D. sales started to drop. The design on A-KAD is similar to A and B Rekord and C Rekord came out August 1966. Then there were the energy crisis thingies which finished Opel's big boats. There never was anything like them since and Opel had nothing to compete with bigger BMW's and Mercedes' which combined with fwd era rust and quality problems still costs dearly today.

At the time Bill Mitchell led GM design and at Opel Chuck Jordan 67-71 and after him Dave Holls. Clare MacKichan led the Rekord studios (Rekord A and B) and Erhard Schnell the Advanced studios (Rekord C).

What about the people behind GMH design?

 

[Wesuri]

Maybe it's time for an update again. A month back bought a new project, 1972 Kadett B LS coupe.

the C-model that followed it was sold in Australia as Holden Gemini.

So nothing on the designers?

 

[Wesuri]

Time for a little update on this Opel saga of mine.

Last summer a fellow enthusiast offered a Senator B to me and because the deal was good, had to buy it :surprise:.

It's an -89 30NE automatic 177hp. Feels very solid and runs good even if driven quite a lot already.

Bought it as a spare daily if something happens to my Omega.

But now they are both promoted as hobby vehicles as I bought an Omega B2 Caravan as new daily. We'll see how that one holds together.

 

[Calaber]

So nothing on the designers?

I can't recall all the Holden designers over the years but here goes for those I can recall.

Fred David (Davis?) from FE until the EF (which was canned by GM, who had their Detroit designers do the job. This became the HD). Fred was Australian. He also had designed the EJ which the yanks changed quite a bit before production began. Fred's design was pretty fugly. (Actually, the EF was damned fugly too>)

Joe Schemansky (American) from around the HD/HR period (1965-67) until the HQ (1971)

Leo Pruneau (American)from HJ (?) until the early Commodores.

Phil Zmood (VT - 1997 until ?) Australian


And the most recent one (Mike Pascoe), who designed the Monaro. Now chief designer for GM in the States. (Australian)

 

[Wesuri]

Thanks again Calaber, those names should help the data mining a bit.

 

[Wesuri]

Just noticed that I had a message left on this forum by a new visitor few months ago. Sorry it took so long to answer. I thought I'd share his site with you all because it focuses on Commodore C and has bunch of interesting stuff. Very interesting site. Content is in German.

Opel Commodore C - Wissenswertes über den Opel Commodore C

It seems that I have to get my hands on "Gregory's scientific publications no 117, Commodore VB series service and repair manual" . Anyone have a spare?

 

[Wesuri]

"Instant winter" arrived yesterday. Here's my Omega B on the morning

at least 20cm more of the white stuff has dropped down since during the day and more keeps coming all the time.

traffic gets a bit challenging at times

I parked by diving into the snowbank with speed as ploughing doesn't keep up. Interesting to get moving tomorrow.

edit: a bit of shoveling was needed to get going

 

[Wesuri]

I have to post this nice little pair of pics of the idling reserve-dailys

November

December