is not unfamiliar with many domestic car fans or car fans, and many car friends around him are still obsessed with the Opel brand that was forced to withdraw from the Chinese market. Some models such as Astra Astra and Vectra Vita, which once had poor sales in China, can occasionally be seen.
But a little older car owner may remember that 2000 years ago, there was an Opel with a very cost-effective performance in the domestic auto showroom. The front-engine rear-wheel drive and the size is not inferior to the BMW 5 Series and Mercedes E-Class that were sold at that time. The price is relatively affordable: the 2.2-liter four-cylinder engine is sold for less than 400,000 yuan. In the era when private blowouts into the family and when the car was popular, it was definitely the most cost-effective European imported car of that era.
This is the protagonist of this article: Opel Omega, Opel Omega.
Omega sold in China around 2000 belongs to its second generation model, and it is the Omega B2 after a minor facelift in 1999. This article will temporarily put Omega B first, and first introduce the first generation of Omega A that has also been sold in China.
The first generation of Omega A was born in August 1986. It was the second-class model positioned by Opel at that time. Historically, although Opel was a car brand with extremely high popularity and market share in the German car world, they did not rashly achieve full-car series coverage. The so-called full-car series coverage is from A-class to F-class, followed by a few J-class (SUVs and off-road vehicles) and M-class (Minivan), and finally as a dessert, the business idea is not Opel's ideal. Since 1924, the first mass-produced car, 4/12 PS (Tree Frog), was positioned as a C-class car, that is, a small family car. Later, the 10/40PS was launched as an E-class model, followed by 7/34PS and 8/40PS, both D-class car positioned as a D-class car. Finally, it was launched as a 12/50PS (Regent) positioned as a F-class in 1928. That is to say, before GM began to acquire Opel in 1929, they had completed the strategic layout of model classification. After GM completed 100% ownership in 1931, it basically did not modify the strategic positioning of Opel.
Six-door version of Omega Limousine has Armbruster-Stageway for production, and the number is not large. The target group is for business reception, because Minivan has not yet become the mainstream business reception model at that time, and Europe still prefers this type of E-class sedan-modified extended cars for commercial use.
Opel's 25 millionth car was given to Omega, which is of far-reaching significance.
Opel entered its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s and became the second largest auto manufacturer in Germany. Although its production capacity is not as good as Volkswagen, the entire brand positioning and product quality are beyond the reach of Volkswagen. The concept of "poor people buy Volkswagen, middle-class wealthy people buy Opels, businessmen and politicians sit on Mecedes" is still the grading concept of most Germans or Europeans for German auto brands, and after the war and the special cold In the war environment, the ruling concept of major political parties in Europe was to create the number of middle-class and rich people to obtain the maximum tax revenue. In addition, under the halo of the United States as a European savior at that time, Opel, as a subsidiary of General Motors, was naturally "respected" in the middle class. Until 1972, Opel's market share reached 20.4%, surpassing Volkswagen, which mainly relies on low-end models. It was because of Opel that Volkswagen was forced to launch a model that could challenge Kadett, that is, the Golf Golf familiar to domestic car fans. In 1980, because the shock wave of the second oil crisis began to affect the automobile industry, Opel, which focused on large and medium-sized models, suffered losses, and the sales of luxury cars shrank sharply. Opel could only lay off employees to deal with it, but the quality problems derived from the layoffs damaged the brand's reputation. Volkswagen and Ford Europe, which prefer small and medium-sized cars, had little impact. With one increase and the other decline, Opel's position began to be at a disadvantage compared to its competitors.As the parent company, General Motors saw this happening and quickly began personnel changes from the top to rescue the market. The model strategy also adjusted. In 1982, the Commodore C commander was discontinued, the first generation of Corsa, which was positioned as a B-class car, and turned the sales backbone model Kadett to the front-wheel drive platform to reduce costs.
Kadett B is a C-class sedan that was very popular in the European market in the 1960s and 1970s.
Corsa A was a B-class car in the 1980s to save sales decline due to the oil crisis. It was considered a life-saving straw for Opel at that time.
spent a long text to describe the era background of the birth of Opel Omega. In fact, this is the necessary method to correctly understand cars. Any product is created by the background of the times. For example, today, various car manufacturers say that fuel engines are discontinued and replaced by electric power drivers. This era background is the Paris Climate Agreement, advocating energy conservation and emission reduction, and reducing carbon emissions, because the source of truly clean electricity: nuclear fusion is already on the road, and the eyes are only looking at the current supply of energy by relying on nuclear energy and coal-fired power. The trend of electric vehicles is indeed a bottom-line.
Let’s talk about Omega, the Omega series and the Senator B launched later were both built using the general V platform. The general V platform was born in 1966. It is a frame platform with a front-engine rear-wheel drive layout. It is commonly used on several overseas brands of GM, such as Holden, Opel, Daewoo, etc. This frame platform was used until 2007 and was served for 40 years, which is very rare in the history of the automobile industry. Since the Omega A and Senator B use the same frame platform, even the wheelbase is 2730mm and the positioning is E-class, there must be a division of labor between the two: Senator means the Senate, from the name of the car, you can know that it is defined as a high-end model, commonly known as the E+ level, and the opponent's setting is the BMW's first-generation 7 Series (E23) at that time. In addition to the wheelbase being slightly shorter than the opponent, the power system is enough to challenge the 745i at that time, and the top-end model also has the ERC electronic shock absorber system that appeared for the first time in Europe. However, after BMW launched the second-generation E32 in 1986, Senator's technical and power advantages over the first-generation 7 Series no longer exist, that is, it lost its opponent and highly overlapped with the Omega position. Therefore, when Omega launched the second-generation in 1993, Senator was merged into the Omega series. Although
Senator B is almost the same as the hardware configuration of Omega and Carlton, it is a little higher than Omega A in both appearance and internal configuration. At that time, Opel's competitors of the same level were set as BMW, but its production capacity must be in line with Volkswagen. Such a positioning of being neither up nor down also laid the ground for the decline of the brand in the early 1980s. Looking back, if I had been competing with BMW firmly at that time, the situation of the top three Germans today might have become MOA.
LCD instrument was a popular high-tech configuration in the 1980s, so it was used on both high-end Senator and Omega. Note: Senator is equipped with an air conditioning system standard, and it is also a dual-zone independent training. This configuration was very high-end at the time.
Opel Omega and Hosu Carlton were developed together, and are placed in Opel in Europe and the global markets, and are supplied to the UK and other countries. The two are exactly the same in terms of configuration, functions, internal and external design, except where to place the steering wheel.
The front wheel adopts a subframe with McPherson suspension, and the rear wheel uses a subframe with a semi-torking arm.
Op Omega A and Husu's third-generation Carlton facelift project began in 1981. The entire project cost about 1.5 billion pounds. The project code is V87. V refers to the general V platform and 87 is the car to be launched in 1987. In order to pursue low wind resistance to achieve low fuel consumption performance, the new car design spent 1,400 hours on wind tunnel testing, and the final drag coefficient was only 0.28, which is significantly helpful for fuel consumption over 80 kilometers per hour.The new car has designed a total of 6,337 new parts and has undergone a total of 4.7 million miles of tests. The exterior is pleasing to the eye, and the internal updates are also obvious. For example, the entire series has begun to use fuel injection systems, the entire car series is equipped with ABS anti-lock braking system, and it has an on-board computer to provide necessary driving data references for driving, etc. It is precisely this persistence that meets people's expectations for future cars at that time. In 1987, the first generation of Omega A was named the European Car of the Year, which is well deserved.
In Germany, Opel was the first car brand to introduce flow-based production, so in terms of new car production, the Omega A project is also an innovation of Opel.
Before this, many of the five-speed manual transmissions of Opel came from Getrag, but later it was found that the stability was not as good as expected, so it was replaced by the R25 series developed by General Motors.
inline four-cylinder engine is divided into three types: 1.8L, 2.0L and 2.4L, with a maximum horsepower ranging from 82 to 125 horsepower. Carburetor models are available in some markets, but the fuel-injected versions sold in the European market.
The six-cylinder engines of the early version of A1 are all three-month upgrades. In August 1987, the C30LE with catalytic, with a maximum horsepower of 156 horsepower; the catalytic version is called C30NE with a maximum horsepower of 177 horsepower; in August 1988, it was unified into C30NE with a catalytic, with a engine management system Motronic 4.1, and a maximum horsepower of 177 horsepower.
Omega is divided into ordinary four-cylinder, Caravan station wagon and Omega 3000, each with different appearances.
Omega 3000, which was only launched in August 987, uses a three-liter inline six-cylinder engine with a maximum horsepower of 156 horsepower, and increased to 177 horsepower in 1988.
Manual five-front speed transmission comes from GM, the model of the inline four-cylinder engine is R25, and the inline six-cylinder is R28.
Europeans like to use station wagons, which are no worse than Minivan, and the body is lighter, the wind resistance coefficient is lower, and the fuel consumption is more reasonable.
In July 11990, the Omega A underwent a minor facelift, which generally became the Omega A2, with chrome trim added to the bumper and darker taillights; the engine was newly added with a 2.6-liter straight six, and the three-liter model introduced 24-valve technology. In September 1990, the Omega Evolution 500 was launched, with the engine being modified by Irmscher. As for the high-performance version of Lotus Omega, which was modified and trained by Lotus, it was delivered in September 1990 and ended in August 1992. A total of 950 units were produced, and it was also the fastest mass-produced car at that time. Although the Alpina B10 Biturbo later surpassed it, Alpina has always been a modified manufacturer, and there is still a cognitive difference between it and the prestigious mass-produced car.
Omega A2 was launched in 1990 and has a lot of differences in appearance from A1, especially the application of chrome decorative strips is even more distinguishable at a glance.
inline six cylinder is divided into two displacements: 2.6L and 3.0L. This engine, code-named C26NE, is a new power system provided after a minor facelift in 1990, with a maximum horsepower of 150 horsepower. This engine has a variable intake manifold system (Dual Ram), which further reduces energy consumption.
This is a high-performance engine C30XEI modified by Irmscher. It is used on the Omega Evolution 500 and has a maximum horsepower of 230 horsepower, second only to the Lotus Omega's 3.6-liter Ghost Engine C36GET.
This fastest four-door sedan of the year, Lotus Omega, has written a special article before, so I won’t be burdened here. (Type Lotus Omega or Lotus Omega to watch)
Omega Evolution 500 Limited Edition. The
Omega Evolution 500 of course has also been replaced with a more sporty barrel seat.
Omega 24V is actually the previous Omega 3000, which is also a new logo that appeared in 1993. The engine model is C30SEJ and the maximum horsepower is 200 horsepower.
In May 11993, Omega A and its sister cars Senator B and Carlton were discontinued. Omega and Senator were merged into Omega. This is the second generation Omega B car series. Let's continue to talk in the next article.
