How Opel Pioneered - and Continues to Perfect - the Station Wagon

RÜSSELSHEIM, GERMANY – July 20, 2010: The coming premiere of Opel’s new compact wagon, the Astra Sports Tourer, is a good opportunity to remember the sensation Opel created in Europe when it launched the Olympia Rekord Caravan in 1953 – a popular station wagon that allowed owners the flexibility to combine professional and private use in one vehicle.

For nearly six decades, Opel has made station wagons successful in Europe, especially in the compact segment, where the Kadett and Astra Caravan have consistently been top sellers throughout the continent .

From the start of automobile history, there was a clear distinction between delivery vans, which hauled goods and bulky loads, and automobiles, which transported people with maximum space and comfort. Most of the daily uses which make a wagon so relevant nowadays simply did not exist back then: There was no need to load a week’s worth of groceries into a car; no surfboards to slide into the back for a weekend by the sea. Before the mid-1930s, travelers’ luggage did not even cohabit with passengers in the cabin of the car; generally, the stuff was packed in solid boxes that were attached to racks affixed to the rear or on the footboards.

It all started in America

When the small US automotive company Hudson introduced its new Terraplane Station Wagon in December 1936, few people guessed that this new kind of vehicle would change the way society traveled – for holidays, business trips or simply transporting families. At the time, it was simply seen as one of the many hybrid design attempts straddling the proportions of a sedan and delivery vehicle.

Still, the Terraplane, with its wood-paneled bodywork and large rear door was the first uncompromising realization of the station wagon concept, and the first to be mass-produced. Unfortunately, the idea never achieved any marketable success until after the Second World War, in large part because there was simply no demand for spacious, multi-purpose vehicles.

That changed in the mid-1940s with the rise of a middle-class mainly consisting of independent trade people, sales representatives and craftsmen who needed vehicles for professional business but couldn’t yet afford a separate car for their family. All the main US car manufacturers started selling station wagons. However, they first outsourced the construction of their bodies to small suppliers, in large part because the time-consuming production of small series was not worth the trouble.

The small, often workshop-based, bodywork manufacturers built the special station wagon bodies in wood or a combination of wood and steel. Although the bodies of early American station wagons (known as “woodies”) are today regarded as being particularly attractive, they were, in fact, no more than an expedient solution. The bodywork suppliers used wood because processing steel would have been too complicated.

When demand for such versatile vehicles began to rise steadily, major US manufacturers took over the production with an all-steel construction – often paneled with imitation wood, which helped to visually differentiate them from pure delivery vans.

Popularizing the station wagon in Europe: The 1953 Opel Olympia Rekord Caravan

In Europe, the distinction between a delivery vehicle and a passenger car began to blur with the arrival of integral body construction. But only at the beginning of the German Wirtschaftswunder - or economic miracle - in the 1950s,

As in the US a few years earlier, the rise of the middle class combined with a baby-boom to create a need that simply called for a new kind of vehicle. Station wagons provided the perfect solution because they could serve as a workhorse during the week and a family car on weekends. Opel was the first German manufacturer who identified this trend and offered such a flexible car. In 1953 at the International Automobile Exhibition in Frankfurt, Opel presented the first true European station wagon: The Olympia Rekord, with its boxy rear end featuring side windows was shown alongside the sedan version. Both shared a pontoon body and characteristic shark mouth, but the station wagon established a name which would go down in automotive history as a synonym for a whole automobile genre: the “CarAvan.” According to legend, the word combination of “car” and “van” came from the puzzled question, “Is this car a van?”

In contrast to conventional, box-type delivery vans the Opel Olympia Rekord Caravan of 1953 was extravagantly appointed by the standards of the time. “With just a few turns of the hand,” according to Opel advertising, “and without any great effort, the back seats can be folded down – the elegant, respectable Opel Caravan has become a transporter with great utility value and genuine economy.”

The station wagon was quickly all the rage in Europe, a perfect synthesis of elegant, presentable sedan and practical commercial vehicle. . In Germany, people referred to this new body style as a “Caravan” or “Kombi,” an abbreviation for “Kombinationsfahrzeug” – a vehicle combining attributes from two categories. Nowadays, marketers would call it a “flexible cross-over.”

From the midsize wagons to the compact Kadett Caravan

Increasingly more non-tradesmen began to catch on to the station wagon concept, and Opel ensured that an attractive station wagon variant appeared alongside every new Opel model. The brand produced around 23,400 units of the 1953 and 1954 station wagons, more than ten percent of sedan sales. By 1955, wagons reached a sales proportion of around 20 percent: 107,000 sedans to 24,000 wagons.

Encouraged by the rising sales of the station wagons in the mid-size vehicle segment, Opel added a station wagon variant to its first post-war compact car, the 1962 Kadett A. The affordable compact Kadett A Caravan made its debut in March 1963. This catapulted Caravan sales to such heights that almost 50 percent of all German station wagons at the time were produced by Opel. When production of the Kadett A came to an end in 1965, nearly one in four – roughly 500,000 to 125,000 units through Europe – was a station wagon.

With larger tires than the sedan version (6.00-12 instead of 5.50-12) and strengthened suspension, the Kadett Caravan could carry loads of 430 kilograms, around 100 kilograms more than the sedan. And while the sedan was widely regarded as being spacious, the Kadett Caravan was even more so. Its generously proportioned load area put some station wagon competitors to shame. Opel also offered an optional extra which gave the first hint of modern-day vans: the load area could be fitted with an additional, rear-facing child seat – a feature that could well be seen as an ancestor of the Zafira.

Opel set trends for lifestyle station wagons

In 1970, Opel created a new kind of station wagon that was deliberately aimed at pure family and leisure activities, irrespective of its workhorse connotation, by adding sporty, more lifestyle-oriented accents.

Opel had given a first indication of this move at the Geneva Motor Show in 1968, with its “Commodore Voyage” study: This large “Kombi” got a special, wooden-like exterior decor reminiscent of the American woodies. Though it never made it to production, it opened a door for new experiments at Opel Styling, the design department of that time. Designers worked on several sleek, elegant and largely polished wagons in the late 1960s and early 1970s. All were redubbed “Voyage” to underline their more leisure-oriented and surely more luxurious execution. Workhorses were out, times were ripe for a new kind of wagon which proudly combined space and luxury, with large, light airy windows.

The concept hit the market in 1970 as the Ascona Voyage, with characteristic, imitation wood side paneling. The Voyage model name made it clear where the station wagon journey was headed: its life as a tradesman’s van was coming to an end, and Opel was again a trendsetter.

The facts proved its vision: In the early 1970s, only around 20 percent of wagon buyers used their car exclusively as a private vehicle; but by the early 1990s, more than 50 percent did so. The caravan range which, since the Ascona Voyage, had always included an especially luxurious and sporty version, offered a multi-purpose vehicle to suit every taste and budget.

Taking a ride on the wild side

Opel continued to set trends and push the wagon concept forward towards large-engine, high-performance vehicles in the upper price category. In 1989, it fitted a 204 hp, three-liter, 6-in-line engine into the Omega Caravan 24v, making it the fastest production wagon in the world. This was another new concept from Opel, which has inspired many manufacturers since. In 1993, the concept was applied to the compact segment, with the Astra Caravan 16v; its 2.0 liter 16V 150 hp engine - the most powerful station wagon in its class at that time. Both the Omega and the Astra set further class records. Apart from outstanding driving performance, with top speeds of around 240 km/h (Omega) and over 200 km/h (Astra), they had the largest load-carrying capacities in their class.

Following this trend, the next generation Astra OPC Caravan launched in 2002 was powered by a 147kW/200 hp, 2.0 16V Turbo engine – the same as featured on the sportiest Astra 3-door. It could hit 231 km/h and sprint from 0 to 100 km/h in 7.8 seconds.. The 325 hp Opel Insignia OPC Sports Tourer, first launched in 2009, took a huge step forward in terms of driving dynamics with even more power, a Flexride chassis system and Adaptive 4x4 system.

Closing the circle – Astra Sports Tourer combines sportiness with functionality

The new Astra Sports Tourer, which will debut at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, is the natural evolution of the species: It is a sleek, stylish wagon featuring first class practicality and ample cargo carrying capacity. Like the first Caravan, it allows owners to have only one car for both professional and private life. But it brings all the sportiness and luxury that first emerged in the Opel “Voyage” wagons of the 1970s to a perfect, contemporary shape and execution.