“The Insignia had to shock, the Astra no: all it had to do, quite simply, was continue”. Thus Mark Adams when presenting the new phase in the to a large extent revolutionary styling process that is now underway at Opel. “But this does not mean that we have confined ourselves to siphoning off lines and concepts from one model to another: I don’t want forced solutions, every model needs its own personality even though the common themes have got to be there too. Like the sculpted artistry that we find in many of the lines”.
It goes without saying that the context is much different, if for no other reason than that at +71 mm the wheelbase is much longer than in the past (although it is still much shorter than that of the Insignia). Just as the mission is different for a model which still at first sight announces its desire to appear more enticing – emblematic is the brightwork that completely contours the windows – but above all it is sportier than in the past. Here then is a much less emphatic front than the one the flagship proposed. More horizontal development pivoting round a lower trapezoidal grille, points up the car’s low stance.
Everything comes with the customary image work entrusted to the light sources: the direction indicators, for example, have been shifted into the bumpers where we usually find the fog-lights (which in the present case overlap) while in the tail the lights present a wing-shaped profile. A tail that to some extent proposes an even sportier look, for the angle of the rear window and for all the space which, transversally, separates it from the wheels in what Adams does not hesitate to define as the “911 effect”.
The article continues in Auto & Design no. 178
