Three years after he was appointed head of General Motors Europe’s design operations in Rüsselsheim, Germany, Bryan Nesbitt has presented his first major design effort which will have a mid-term impact on all Opel and Vauxhall designs.
Still recognisable as an Opel or Vauxhall, it is the form language of this Geneva show car that makes the difference. “It is the signature for GME’s future small, lower-medium and upper-medium generations,” Nesbitt said. “It may be unconventional at first sight, and therefore polarising, but it will be followed by acceptance.”
Next year’s successor to GME’s upper-medium Vectra, which will bear another name and gets a bit more up-market position, will be the first production model on which GTC’s design details are applied. The GTC concept shows some
new front-end features, with vertical air intake flanking the upper and lower horizontal grilles. They also overlap with swallow horizontal headlamps.
“But these vertical intakes could remain an exclusive feature for performance versions only,” Nesbitt said.
The car’s sculpted sides, already seen on the latest Opel GT, is the Nesbitt’s most important signature. “This sculpted blade can be applied on all future models, in various forms,” said Nesbitt who was also responsible for the Opel/Vauxhall GT which he designed when still working in America.
The blade graphics are repeated in the new headlamp design as well as the more familiar (since known from today’s Opel Astra GTC) tail light graphics. Breaking up the traditional Opel logo in a traditional circular part with an embossed ‘blitz’ lying on top of it reflects the attention for evolutionary detail development of GME’s design philosophy…
The article continues in Auto & Design no. 164
