Observant GM Authority reader Daniel spotted an Opel Meriva parked in the city of Markham in Southern Ontario. Coated in the Crinan Blue hue and wearing Ontario Dealer plates, the Meriva sported a manual transmission and leather-wrapped seats while sporting an Ontario dealer plate in the rear. In addition, the Gamma-based sub-compact MPV had testing gear installed on the front passenger side — indicating the possibility that the vehicle might be undergoing testing for the North American market. Daniel says that outside of the testing gear, the vehicle looked stock.
The sighting of the Meriva in Canada follows that of an Opel Vivaro in November of last year, which also was seen with testing equipment. What do you make of all this? Talk to us in the comments.
Hat tip to Daniel.
Editor’s note: if you have a tip about this sighting, or about something unrelated to this, that you would like to share privately with the GM Authority staff, please do so here.
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Comments
So is Opel considering the Canadian market, interesting…
If so, bring the astra with you
Vauxhall & Opel Meriva fits between MPVs Agila, Meriva, Zafira, Zafira tour in the range (Opel also sell MPV Combo Tour & Vivaro Combi). Nice little family car with suicide doors too.
Meriva like both Zafira’s has Flex seating, GM’s clever seating system.
The dealer probably just imported this car for fun/selling
I don’t have a problem with GM’s various brands using each others vehicles & badging them up as a new veichle, after all its all GM. What dose niggle me is when GM badges up an outsiders car as a GM, usually you end up with a compromise & quite clearly a car which is definitely not a GM car. Thankfully it’s not happened to the extent of some rivals ranges.
And Bentley is an overpriced Volkswagen car
Looks like its based on the Sonic platform. IMO, I think it looks better than the Sonic… It’s more mature, in design, exterior and interior.
Moar Buicks!
Think it’s based on the Astra, the previous Meriva was Corsa based & more upright, this one is more estate/wagon like but still with MPV/ minivan proportions. Engines are all 4 cylinder 1.4, 1.6 & 1.7 diesel.
Jon, the Meriva is a Gamma/SCCS vehicle. The Zafira is based on the Astra (Delta).
I like everything about the interior and high-end options, like adaptive head lights (which I have on my new Mazda 3). Wonderful armrest too by the way. So why can’t GM provide a car like this for the U.S. that fits below the Equinox? What we get will probably be dumbed down to make it cheap. I’d be thrilled to see this with a Buick grille and perhaps slightly larger tires (to suit our rough roads and improve the look a bit). Make the engine U.S. compliant and change absolutely nothing else. That’s it. So why, why, why can’t we have it?
The Opel Meriva is indeed based on the same platform as the Corsa. Anyway it is not the first time Opel is testing its cars outside of Europe, and it doesn´t mean that it will be sold in the US or Canada if you see one on the street. On opel-blog.com is a nice article, where Opel engineers are testing a new automatic gearbox in an Opel Insignia in Chicago, but it´s unfortunately in German. Google Translator helped me a lot.
http://www.opel-blog.com/2013/01/28/automatik-entwicklung-lehre-aus-der-neuen-welt/
Oh sorry I thought Meriva was Astra based, ether way it’s not a bad thing it all adds up to a decent car suitable for a variety of needs & at a reasonable price.
With it being longer & lower than previous Meriva that’s what made me think it was Astra based.
Meriva has yet to get BiTurbo engine could it be that engine being tested out of sight of European eyes!
They’re probably looking at Canada to drop 10k to 20k units per year. Good idea, the Euro is weak and the Canadian dollar is strong. With the disappearance of Pontiac, GM needs to look for other avenues to recoup lost sales.
Wonder if the Meriva is going to have the new 1.0 turbo engine that’s rumoured to be going into the Adam.
Correction on my part the 169″ Meriva uses 1.4t, 1.4, 1.3 Diesel t, & 1.7 Diesel t engines.
If GM wants to support its German subsidiary they should at least import some Opel cars from Europe to North America. A production of the Cascada convertible or Astra GTC in the US or Canada makes no sense due to low sales figures compared to sedans or SUVs. But there are still enough buyers out there who are interested in these cars.
Surly if they was testing to sell in US it would be camouflaged up, which is why I figured it looks about a inch too low (possibly explaining BiTurbo engine) or maybe just my eyes deceiving me. GM more often than not is on the pulse of the buyers, & traditionally Canada seems to like the minivan, couple that with keen interest from some wanting it in US will keep us all guessing.
not unless the owner bought the car from europe and shipped it to here??
Car has no registration plate.
@Jon what car has no registration plate? The one in the photo in Canada? You can’t even see the back!
From the front the one in the picture doesn’t appear to have a registration plate, probably dose have one but I am viewing from an iPhone not a computer so it’s hard to tell.
Does Canada have a front registration plate?
I don’t think it does, which is what made @Jon’s questions a bit confusing for me…
because like my previous post i just thought people from canada just bought it from europe and shipped it to Canada perhaps?? I don’t really see that opel to come to Canada because that would overlap with Buick and Chevrolet.
You can even buy it in germany.
advantages: comfortable seats.
about the meriva: Comfortable seats, space in the interior and trunk
the door concept (reverse)
for further infos: http://www.opel.de language german
Opel offered there cars with opel brand in following countries:
germany,austria,s wiss, france, nederland, belgium,
hungary, poland, czech republic, in the balticum,
russian forderation (bad sales), sweden, norway, denmark, finland and so on…
—known myself !!!
They aren´t offer their cars in north america(official).
Further suggestions: Opel Corsa platform, Tigra Twintop (convertible electric steel roof) , Opel Corsa OPC stands for
OPEL PERFOMANCE CENTER and Opel Mokka/ Chevrolet Trax you can even get it in germany. Take you time to compare and search it.
All these models are small, handy, (4wd) capacity
MY favorite Opel Insignia, Adam