Car Review: the 1973 Opel GT

A Retrospective on the 1973 Opel GT

In the wee hours of the morning, my headlights pierced the darkness somewhere between Gainesville and Micanopy, Florida. An old Led Zeppelin tape blasted tunes from a once premium aftermarket stereo. Tall grass, palmettos, pine trees, and occasional Spanish Moss-draped live oaks enveloped the narrow straight away. Suddenly, a fox appeared in the headlights running straight down the double yellow line. Working quickly with the heavy clutch and four-speed gearbox, I slammed into third gear, took my foot of the gas, popped the clutch, and stomped on the brake pedal. The little white Opel GT dropped out of warp, slid in a straight line, and decelerated. The fox got bigger and bigger for what seemed like forever. Then, he broke to the left and disappeared into the woods.

The year was 1989 and it was a typical adventure in my first car--a 1973 Opel GT. I was a student at the University of Florida. When the library closed, I often took it across Payne's Prairie and went "possum dodging" on miles of rural roads in North Central Florida.

The Opel GT looked much like a 2/3-scale Corvette. However, the Opel GT featured all steel construction while the Corvette's body was made from fiberglass. Where Chevy Corvettes were powered by wild V-8 engines with gobs of power, the Opel GT was powered by a far milder 83 horsepower, 1.9 liter, four-cylinder engine. The Opel GT had recessed headlights that rotated up into position when the driver pushed forward on a mechanical lever in the cockpit.

The Opel GT had manual steering and brakes and a four-speed manual transmission. While the speedometer went up to 150 miles per hour, zero to sixty acceleration times were in the more pedestrian 10 second range. I never went faster than 95 miles per hour in my Opel GT and that passing burst of speed prompted plenty of white smoke from the exhaust pipes. Fuel economy for my Opel GT was a solidly respectable 30 miles per gallon.