Opel before the Vette?

[opelgt71]

I always thought, like a lot of people, that the Opel GT's so called "mini vette" front end styling was influenced by the corvette stingray design. However, I seem to recall reading somewhere that one of the German engineers who worked on the early GT design team was hired by GM to work on the corvette program that led to the stingray design. So which came first? Was the Opel GT design influenced by the vette or was the vette actually influenced by the GT?
Maybe one of you GT history buffs out there can set the record straight.

I'm just curious.

[oldopelguy]

Maybe you read it here:

http://www.opelgt.com/forums/showthr...=&threadid=693

or here:

http://www.opelgt.com/forums/showthr...&threadid=1014

or maybe here:

http://www.opelgt.com/forums/showthr...&threadid=1468

Gotta love that search function in the middle of the left hand column.

[1972ACGT]

I've seen this argument on corvetteforum.com a little. they think that the GT is a little clone. I don't know which came 1st. I hang out with Corvette people primarily, and even drove my GT in a parade with 10 or so Vettes. With a POR VET license plate on my car, can you guess how many "what kind of Corvette is that" questions I got that day??

[Old Hippie]

I do like that Monza design. Sharp for that time. Too bad they came out with the "plain" version.

[GopelT]

According to an artical in Car Life magazine from Dec 1967 MacKichan headed up the design team and that the design was influenced heavily by the Corvair Monza experimental of 1962.

[bosco]

I have a book showing a picture of the opel designers working in a room that included a VERY LARGE picture of a Corvette. Unfortunatly that book seems to be missing.......but I'm looking for it.

[manyopels]

Originally Posted by opelspyder As far as I know the vette came first....as far as the sting ray style. But interesting history linked with Opel and the Corvette.....The first Corvette project name was covered up and called "The Opel Project" so no one would be curious to what was going on.

Visited the Corvette National Museum yesterday near Bowling Green, Kentucky. This is certainly covering old ground for the (I hesitate to say) oldtimers here. But, according to their history, by 1952 when Harley Earl sought support for a low-volume production, two seat sports car, it was named "Project Opel", likely for the reason Opelspyder quotes here. Another source found Googling backs up that statement. It wasn't until later the name 'Corvette' was connected to the car - correct me if I'm wrong - after the British class of naval destroyers. So, while this might be thin ice, technically a GT owner could proudly point out that 'the original GM low-volume production, two-seater sports car was first called an "Opel",' according to the CNM.

This doesn't address the styling issues and correlations seen between the Opel GT, and any connection with the Sting Ray or earlier Mako Shark exercises that are discussed elsewhere in this thread.