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Opel Australia shuttered after less than one year

General Motors has announced that it will shutter Opel's Australian division less than a year after launching the brand in the market. GM's decision to bring Opel, a German-based moniker that the automaker has been trying to figure out what to do with for years, to Australia in August of 2012 never really picked up steam - by June of 2013, the brand had only sold 1,530 cars.
Opel currently has 20 dealers, most of which are part of multi-franchise corporations, which should limit job losses. The future is less certain for 15 Opel staffers in Melbourne, who may or may not be offered positions at Holden, GM's original Australian brand.
The decision to leave the market shouldn't affect the handful of Opel customers. It's likely that the German brand will follow Saab's example, and pass off warranty responsibilities and service duties to another GM brand (Holden, in this case). Opel only ever offered three vehicles in Australia - the flagship Insignia (Buick Regal), the brand's best-selling Astra hatchback and the Corsa subcompact.

Opel Insignia Country Tourer is the Buick crossover we really want [w/video]

Opel brought out its entire Insignia range for the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show, with particular attention paid to each new models refreshed features. Like its colonial cousin, the Buick Regal, the Insignia has gotten a fairly standard mid-cycle freshening that's designed to tide customers over until the next-generation model arrives.
One of the models we've been rather curious about since its debut a few months back was the Insignia Country Tourer - a sort of competitor for soft-roaders like the Subaru Outback and Audi Allroad - that will only be sold in Europe. The lifted, five-door Insignia is distantly related to our Regal, but strikes us as a much more capable, better driving vehicle than the lumbering beast that is the Buick Enclave. Certainly, we'd have no qualms about the Insignia Country Tourer coming to the US and slotting in between the Encore and Enclave. Wishful thinking we know, but do you really blame us?
Take a look up top for our full suite of live images, while photos and a press release on the Insignia Country Tourer are down below. We've also got video of the Country Tourer, which looks like b-roll footage from an episode of Top Gear. Scroll down for more.

Junkyard Gem: 1957 Opel Olympia Rekord P

Starting in the middle 1950s, General Motors made a real effort to sell Americans its vehicles built on the other side of the Atlantic. Pontiac dealers here got the British-built Vauxhall Victor, while Buick dealers sold the Victor's cousin, the German-built Opel Olympia. We saw a discarded '58 Victor Super Estate a few years back, and today's Junkyard Gem showed up recently at the very same car graveyard in northeastern Colorado. The Olympia name goes way back in Opel history, when the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games inspired its selection. You'd think that the notoriety of the 1936 Olympics as a Nazi Party propaganda festival might have encouraged Opel to change the car's name after World War II, but Olympia badges went on various Opels (with some pauses) through 1970. Just as the Malibu name began its life as a trim-level designation for the Chevelle, so did the Rekord name get appended onto the Olympia. The Rekord name eventually took over completely, with the last Rekords coming off the assembly line in 1986. The "P" in this car's name comes from the panoramic wraparound front and rear glass, a feature inspired by the gorgeous machinery coming from GM's Detroit car divisions at the time. Starting in 1959, this model became known as just the Opel Rekord. The influence from snouts seen on the 1955 Buick and 1955 Oldsmobile is unmistakable. There's a great deal of 1956 Chevrolet inspiration visible in the side view. The MSRP for this car in the United States was $1,995, which amounts to $21,818 in 2023 dollars. The similar 1957 Vauxhall Victor sedan cost $1,988 here ($21,741 in today's money). The cheapest possible 1957 Chevrolet four-door sedan (the One-Fifty with straight-six engine and three-on-the-tree manual transmission) cost $2,048 ($22,397 now). Of course, this Opel would have been in a showroom with far more upscale 1957 Buicks, which started at $2,660 ($29,090 after inflation) for a four-door. Still, this was a small car that got good fuel economy and was easy to park, yet boasted up-to-the-minute American styling. Buick dealers managed to move some of them here, though Opels became far more commonplace on our roads starting in the late 1960s. Yes, I bought this beautiful hood ornament; it now lives on my garage wall. The engine is a 1.5-liter overhead-valve straight-four, rated at 51.3 horsepower and 78.8 pound-feet. The ancestry of this engine goes all the way back to the 1937 Olympia.