Post
by DerGolgo » Wed Jan 15, 2014 9:26 am
A word of caution: in the late 90s, Opel got a ... less than good reputation for reliability.
Anyone I know pimping around in an Opel from that era had no great problems and issues I'm aware of, my parents just sold their 15 year old Vectra which did have some kinks for a fairly reasonable sum, considering the mileage and all. It seem that, truly, old Opels never dies. They used to have a good reputation for reliability and being cheap to fix, I was told it used to be that any hose under an Opel's bonnet was held on with the same kind of cheap hose-clamp you could, just like the hose itself, get at the hardware store for pennies. They stopped doing that in the 90s, so repairs got a little more costly. And their build quality declined.
If an Opel of that era gets as far as being properly "old", it was put together right and had any kinks ironed out so it, in all likelihood, a truly robust vehicle.
As far as the build quality goes ... when I was in engineering school, we toured the local Opel plant once. A fellow student saw something. I cannot vouch for it, but she said she saw how the indicator lenses were being put in. The guy who bolted them in was handed them by another guy ... who's job it was to stand there with a fucking Dremel and remove a little plastic knob from each lens he pulled out of the bin of lenses in front of him. On every single lens.
Story is that, in the 90s, GM decided to get really involved up-close and personal in managing Opel, introducing American management techniques and even entire models designed in the US. Didn't go very well for Opel. They eventually even had to discontinue the Omega model line entirely. Not because they were no good, the expert opinion in the media was that, technologically, it was just as good as any Audi or large VW. But the design and marketing were so spot-on, no one bought it, so they had to re-brand the whole model line as the Insignia. They managed to scrape by in the big old crisis of recent years, so it did come as a little surprise that the third time GM announced they'd close the Opel plant in my town, it would be the time they really meant it - after the crisis was over and GM was on it's way up again. The plant is turning 50 this year. There are people in this town who started working there when they got out of school at 16 and have retired, at the regular retirement age, never having worked anywhere else. Last time they threatened closure, there was a big public outcry, protest marches, I was one of 50k people (in a town of 390k) who came out on a single day, the unions managed to convince GM to sign a legally binding agreement to keep the plant running till 2015. So, on December 31, when the last shift of the day clocks out, they pull the plugs on all assembly lines. The parts-distribution center will keep going, but only one year longer. GM won't let any enticement make them even consider reconsidering. At one point last year, they threatened shutting down in the summer of 2014 and dared the unions to take them to court, just so they could make the deals that would have them keep the distribution center open a little more favorable. There are "only" 3000 people still working there (used to be 20k), but still. You come from here, you grew up in the certainty that Opel is the bestest car, you grew up loving Opel. So I'm less than enthusiastic about anything GM, currently.
If there were absolutely anything to be afraid of, don't you think I would have worn pants?
I said I have a big stick.
