The Opel GT remains as one of the most influential German sports car designs of the 20th century, holding a small, but strong niche of owners. However, Vauxhall almost had its own GT, too.
In 1966, Vauxhall had cooked up the XVR concept. Except, it was never even revealed to the public, according to Car Design News. Vauxhall completed the design in 1966, but then immediately decided it was much too complicated to ever put into production, so it was forgotten.
The 1966 XVR features a decidedly C3 Corvette look to it, but features gullwing doors. The concept was intially built to flex Vauxhall’s innovation muscles with the opening of its Design and Engineering Center in Luton, UK.
Now retired GM Vice President of Global Design, Ed Welburn, and Opel-Vauxhall lead designer Mark Adams took to the 2016 Goodwood Festival of Speed to finally reveal the striking Vauxhall concept that never was.
Despite never reaching production, Opel came to the rescue. Vauxhall became aware of Opel’s intentions to develop a GT for production in 1969, likely not helping the XVR’s business case.
Comments
It amazes me how nearly every time something to do with Vauxhall is issued by GM Authority it is almost always totally wrong, why do you never check anything? The XVR Concept WAS shown publically at the Geneva, Paris and London Motor Shows in 1966. If you want to read a factual account of the XVR history go to vauxpedia.net
GM Authority is citing Design News as their source. Vauxpedia.net is an Enthusiast site. They state they were started to counter inaccuracies and garbage about Vauxhall. So my question is this, where do they get their information and how do we know their sources are correct. Before you slam GM Authority maybe cite a better source for your info
First of all Glen vauxpedia.net is my site, second as it clearly states on the front page the sources are GM Archive & GM Design, in addition to Vauxhall Motors, so the sources of information are cast iron. So yes I am fully justified on this occasion to slam GM Authority. In addition as Drum Junkie states new archive images of a second GT Concept had come to light – and where did they come to light? Yes you guessed it vauxpedia.net! Vauxhall used the images from vauxpedia to make the clay model at Goodwood. For historical information on Vauxhall there is no better place to source material than vauxpedia.
It seems possible that there was a misreading by GMAuthority of the source article from Design News. In the Design News article, they explained that “recent archive photos had come to light showing how a second concept – called Vauxhall GT – was created…”. So, it would appear that the Design News article wasn’t implying that the XVR was clandestine, but a second concept for a Vauxhall GT was done up for a production study. That second concept was re-created in clay and shown to the public for the first time at the GoodWood festival.
I would have liked to have seen more information on those Vauxhall/Opel similarities reported in this article.
Also the Opel GT both in the 60’s & naughties never was a Vauxhall.