A is for Omega.
The other day when digging back into my Car collection I stumbled or fell or happened across an article by LJK Setright dealing with the Opel Omega B. In that article he chanted the praises of its predecessor, the Omega A. And this is the car we have for you today, photographed in Hamburg in July, as the thermometer managed to Continue reading “I’ll Give Anything to See a Berger’s Clouded Yellow…!”
We’ll have no shouting here…
Despite life returning to a semblance of normality around these parts over recent months, the sighting of 2020-registered cars remain something of a novelty. Of course cars have been registered – some having even been sold – but in a country where new car sales had already been in state of contraction before the pandemic swept all before it, the current situation facing the Irish retail sales trade must be sobering indeed.
One of the more superficial downsides to this is that sightings of new models, while normally a relatively frequent prospect, have been sporadic at best. Amongst the more recent arrivals to these shores is Opel’s current generation Corsa (none of your Vauxhalls in these parts), but to be honest, and in contrast to the (closely-related) Peugeot 208 which preceded it to market, it has been a comparatively rare sight.
During my twice-daily dog walking duties I Continue reading “2020 Vision.”
Although hardly breaking news, the latest Opel Corsa has arrived in the showrooms and examples are arriving on my street. I saw one. Is it really a Corsa at all, I asked myself.
If we get in our time-machine and spin and spiral back to 1982 we would be confronted by the first Corsa which Opel sold until 1993 (hard to believe). Looking at the bold, boxy 1982 shape with its flared wheel-arches and the 2019 version , one could argue that the new PSA Corsa represents a mere return to form. You could also argue that PSA merely wanted to get Opel’s designers to Continue reading “Did You Ever Wonder About The Stefaneschi Triptych?”
A random glance at a Mazda Demio made me think again about grilles and the way designers deal with that hole in the front of the car.
The subject unfolds as a matter of design semantics. That means more or less we are concerned with the meaning of the air intake and its expression. This Demio (above) is a bit fancier than the one I saw in my district but it is geometrically the same. The approach was to use an “egg-box” in-fill and to use a U-shaped plastic trim piece to enable them to Continue reading “All the Ways We Sang, All the Songs We Went”
Ignoring provisos about spin cycles, we report on some news.
Despite the question marks which remain poised above Groupe PSA’s revival under Carlos Tavares, one cannot deny that the French carmaking giant seems to be playing something of a blinder at present. Last week, following leaked photos which surfaced online, Opel released official images and some details of the forthcoming Corsa B-segment model, due to
go on sale later in the year. Continue reading “Better By FAAR”
Making this week one to note in your journals, dear readers, is the double whammy of the demise of the Fiat Punto and VW Beetle.
You can find the background to the Punto’s demise here. Fiatgroupsworld reported it here. And you can find a report here as well. Naturally we covered these seismic events here. VW of Oneonta reports the Beetle’s demise here. How many of you have been to Oneonta, by the way? I have! The Sacramento Bee reports the Beetle’s end this way: click this. This is a report from a UK source. And Autocropley reflects on the car’s life and times by making the decision to Continue reading “Manchester, arrest for theft of pavement from”
Robertas Parazitas looks at the changing shape of the European car market over the last twenty years. The numbers tell several stories; some are manifestly obvious, others may surprise you.
The right-hand column lists European sales in 2017, highest to lowest. The numbers to the left tell several stories, many of them unhappy. Continue reading “Two Fevered Decades – Taking the Temperature of the European Car Market.”
As promised during the weekend here is a small reconsideration of the Opel Corsa, this time the 1.4 litre, 75 PS petrol five-door.
We had a short review of the 1.0 litre version in the summer of 2015 and decided it was okay. This time I have the 1.4 litre mid-spec version to try.
I can immediately say that the uprated interior decorations make for a much more festive feeling. The steering wheel looks like it’s the nice one from the Adam and so the upshot of this is that without wood and leather and shades of beige, it still makes for a comfortable and quite convivial driving environment. My notes, written up after a hard charging day at the wheel, list the nice steering, smooth uptake and HVAC controls that won’t cause you to Continue reading “Corsa Revisited”
In the rental car lottery I drew the Corsa straw. There will be a short report on it before very long.
The first thing I noticed related to the spec. They have Adamed this version so it has more of a feel-good factor than the one I rented in 2015. I drove off in the dark which somehow made me more aware of the delightfully light steering and also the fun way the dials do a test sweep of the car’s instrument faces. It’s a pleasant vehicle to drive around town and the city-steering makes it a breeze. The day’s mission is a four hour drive over motorways and country roads. We’ll see the car bears up in the course of the day…
I mentioned mid-range colours earlier. Here’s what I meant. Sorry, it’s another Ford. Down the road there parked one in goldy browny grey too.
Is this colour available in the UK? A similar colour appeared on Ghia Mondeo Mk2s and on a special edition Ka Mk1.
As an aside, the new Astra and newish Corsa are only appearing with lease-me colours: black, metallic grey and red. That confounds my launch colour theory.
Thought two: in a run-out period could zany colours be a cheap selling point? Is a cheerful paint colour the Fiat 500s main selling point now?
“Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation” – Edward Abbey.
17 years. You would think that was long enough to convince my girlfriend that a W126 is the ideal family car. It seems not. I’ve always loved the cars MB produced during Sacco’s time (I like to think he had called in sick the day they designed the W210) but his first S-Class (especially the coupe) is top of the heap for me. For some reason his theory of Vertical and Horizontal Affinity has always had a strong resonance. Continue reading “Cookie Cutter”
A Valentine’s Gift
As you know, Mr Editor Kearne keeps us under a tight rein. His reputation as the Elliott Ness of transport publishing means that the industry knows that he can’t be bought so, unfortunately, this preconception unfairly passes on to his team of writers. As such, it was rare for this piece of blatant bribery from Vauxhall to pass through the net and, so desperately grateful am I, that it would be wrong of me not to draw your attention to the car it refers to. Continue reading “Post For The Day”
How do we get from China to Warren, Michigan via Rüsselsheim? By Astra, of course.
Why does Opel matter to GM? How about sales of 500,000 cars a year in China and continued survival of Buick in the US.
In the late 70s the science journalist James Burke had an engaging series of programmes called Connections. It traced the links, innovations and the important contingencies that led from the distant past to the technology that we take for granted around us, such as plastic, for example. Behind the invention of this material lay the story of how the 17th Century Dutch preferred not to Continue reading “Cross-Currents: From Tsingtao to Rüsselsheim to Michigan”
Driven To Write 