CarBrandLogos archive · Opel · 1935

OpelOlympia

Germany's first volume car with a unitary all-steel body, named for the Games.

The story

A defining chapter in Opel history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Opel Olympia, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Opel launched this car in 1935 and named it after the Berlin Olympics due the following year. The engineering was the notable part: it was the first German car built in real volume with a unitary all-steel body, dispensing with the separate chassis frame that almost everything else still used. The structure was lighter and stiffer than a body-on-frame equivalent, and it needed the kind of press tooling only a large manufacturer could afford, which Opel had as a subsidiary of General Motors.

Opel olympia cabriolet coach

Design and engineering

The car was aimed at the middle of the market, above the tiny P4 and below the six-cylinder models, and it sold strongly until war ended civilian production in 1940.

Opel Olympia Cabrio 1951 · User ChiemseeMan on de.wikipedia · Public domain

In production

Opel restarted it in 1947, one of the first German cars back in production after the war, and built it until 1953, when the Olympia Rekord took over and the second half of the name went on to a much longer career. Opel revived the name once more between 1967 and 1970 for a better-equipped derivative of the Kadett B.

Opel Olympia 30er vorne-links · Norbert Schnitzler · CC BY-SA 3.0

At a glance