’67-’70 Opel Kadett, image from the Cohort by Hannes.
Text submitted by Harry Case.
The only drawback to my Chevy van was its consistent 12mpg thirst. The only cure was to park it and find a more economical commuter vehicle.
The winter of ‘77 was truly brutal and as the snow melted in the spring, a ‘68 Opel Kadett (B) appeared in the parking lot of my apartment complex, apparently after hibernating all winter. When I went door to door to inquire about it, my neighbor told me he parked it because the brakes were bad and he didn’t want to mess with it. I offered him $50 and it was mine. My baby sister named it “Oliver” because she thought it was both cute and a rattletrap –after all, to us it was basically a tin can.
Opel Kadett B from the Cohort by Hannes.
On the first warm day, I checked the fluids and then started it up without a problem. Putting it in gear the rear brakes wouldn’t release. I laid down in the snow and crawled under the car; I quickly diagnosed a stuck parking brake cable. The quick fix was a brake adjustment which allowed me to test drive it around the apartment complex and then to a gas station to fill up the tank.
Back home I applied liberal amounts of WD40 to free up the rusted cable and it was fine. Oliver was baby blue and remarkably free of rust for a 9-year-old car, so I imagine it was a recent immigrant to Upstate NY.
’68 Kadett image from the brochure.
The Opel was a frugal, obligatory commuter vehicle for my daily drive to the fire apparatus factory where I worked. A 25-mile one-way ride using back roads since the poor little thing was not geared for interstate driving –At 55 mph the motor sound was irritatingly noisy and the radio (AM only) couldn’t be heard over the racket.
I was unwilling to spend any money on a car that I didn’t enjoy and never looked into any upgrades. I drove it for a year with the only repair being replacing a bent rim after my middle sister found the biggest pothole in the state to drop the passenger side front wheel into. The tire was salvageable but the wheel was so dented I couldn’t get a good bead seal.
“My baby sister had appropriated my mom’s garage for her ’75 Triumph Spitfire” – Spitfire 1500 image from the Cohort by LDeren.
After a year at the fire truck factory, I was promoted to purchasing manager and with the raise I started driving the Chevy van more. I also indulged in my first motorcycle, a Suzuki 250 twin consisting of a frame, wheels, and a basket of parts. My baby sister had appropriated my mom’s garage for her ’75 Triumph Spitfire (I paid a friend $100 to put it together and get it running).
I rode the Suzuki every decent day and weekend and learned that it wasn’t made for interstate riding. A trip of a few miles on I-81 convinced me to stay on the same roads that Oliver frequented. Also, I was caught in a few sudden rainstorms and discovered that riding in the rain was unpleasant and dangerous.
’72 Chevelle image from the Cohort by nifticus392.
In May of 1977, a friend needed money for school and I bought his 72 Chevelle Coupe for $1000. He was originally from California and the car was a real gem, remarkably free of rust for a 5-year-old vehicle in upstate New York. It had a 350 engine and automatic transmission, but the California emissions equipment made it much tamer and finicky than my van.
It was also the first car I owned with air conditioning which made it especially nice for the summer months. You would think that a tradeoff for brutal NY winters would be moderate summers, but that was never true. From July to August the humidity combined with 90-degree temperatures made NY summers oppressively hot and were ideal conditions for breeding mosquitoes to the point that being outside around dusk was torture.
’72 Chevelle image from the Cohort by nifticus392.
That said, I was now very happy with my fleet of automobiles –a vehicle for every occasion. However, my parents were not. I had moved back with them and so had one of my sisters and her husband. My Chevelle brought the car count for the house to seven. The Spitfire in the garage, if possible two in the driveway (my dad’s Pinto and my mom’s –by then a F-150 king cab), my BIL’s Landcruiser on the side of the house, my van, Opel and Chevelle on the front lawn.
I don’t know if the neighbors complained, it was a very tolerant neighborhood, but the amount of snow shoveling and car shuffling was overwhelming and I was told to sell one or more of my vehicles or move out. Tough call.
Being that the Chevelle was in the best condition I had no trouble selling it to a co-worker. I really didn’t miss having a nice and conventional car since I had no steady girlfriend to please and was really too busy with work, school and church to be concerned with impressing a date. But that would soon change…
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1966-1973 Opel Kadett (B) – It Dethroned The Volkswagen
CC Capsule: 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle Hardtop Coupe – Secondhand
CC Capsule: 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu Sedan – Finding Excitement On The Ordinary
I get your point about “not having a girlfriend to please” at that time.
I used to turn up on first dates in my Mini, Renault Twingo, or Toyota IQ commuter vehicles. If that didn’t put them off the “nice” cars would be used on subsequent dates. One gorgeous girl actually lay under my old Mini helping me reattach the rear muffler after its mount had broken – she’s the one I eventually married….
You lucky dog Huey =8-) .
At least my Sweet never complains about my addiction to junk, I don’t take dope nor drink much .
-Nate
I can relate, when I started dating my wife I didn’t have a car, just a motorcycle, although I think she was impressed when I borrowed Mom’s VW Rabbit Convertible for our second date.
I’m English. I have always found British cars to be tinnier, cheaper, crapper, more fragile, of far less quality, & just generally WEAKER than their American counterparts. They even LOOK malnourished.
Even Ford & GM subsidiaries. The Americans seemed to quite deliberately keep the best for themselves, & everybody else got a lesser copy of what they had.
Obviously, everything is different these days. But at the same time, levelling the playing field so comprehensively has led to the game being rather less interesting than it used to be. An ‘American’ car is exactly the same as a German, Japanese, French, or Korean car. Boring. I preferred it the way it was. With the American cars standing out (quite literally) amongst a sea of tin cans.
And generally, harder to work on.
And always accompanied by the disdainful rejoinder that people “just don’t know how to work on them”. Yeah, right, as if it’s normal to start replacing the sparkplugs by, I dunno, removing the rear bumper and working your way forwards.
Quite nutty that in ’67, just 400 miles-odd across the North Sea from GM Germany, GM UK with Vauxhall were making the (by then) unrelated HB Viva, same size but a vastly better-looking car than this (and a rare example of making big-car cues work on a littlie), which was also a better driver. The Opel’s just a bit uptight and miserable-looking.
That said, you’re surely being a bit mean to a car that gave you a year of motoring for fifty bucks!
Interesting, I would have thought that when you needed to shed some vehicles the Chevelle would be the obvious choice to keep.
And what are the odds of two Opel Kadetts being named Oliver?
The Kadetts were pretty simple and fairly rugged if tinny, due to Opel squeezing out every possible ounce of weight possible.
Ah, the days when one could buy a beater, if you will, for $50. Shazam…
I see a lot of Chevy II in this car, it certainly could have used the light alloy side trims stem to stern .
For those who live in rust country, fixing sticky/rusty parking brake cables isn’t too hard : remove them from the care entirely and wipe off as much old crud as possible then pull the cable until the hidden part of the cable is fully exposed , coil it loosely and place in a clean drain pan, fill to covering with undiluted coolant / anti-freeze and allow to soak overnight, whilst still submerged pull the cable back and forth a few times in the Bowden housing, it’ll free up as the un diluted coolant works in ~ once it’s free wipe it dry and re install, you’ll never have a stuck park brake again =8-) .
Most of these older cheap cars can easily be made *much* quieter by adding simple thin closed cell insulation or shipping wrap, glue it inside the doors and rear 1/4 panels vertically, the trunk lid and of course under neath the carpets .
Then cut up cheap clear plastic shower curtains and glue in place before re fitting the door and rear 1/4 panel trim cards . this seals these areas into dead air space, the bubble wrap stops the drumming of the exterior sheet metal .
If the head liner is shot, do the same to the inside of the roof panel, you’ll marvel at how much quieter your cheapo tin can is =8-) .
? Was your first Motocycle a Yamaha or Suzuki ? you say both .
A ’72 Chevelle was nice, too bad it’s not here else you could easily disable the dreaded E.G.R. valve them tune it properly for better running, economy and so on .
“Tough call.” ~ not for me, I never had to suffer with parents telling me I couldn’t park here because I moved out and never looked back .
-Nate
Hi Nate,
The author rode a Suzuki. The Yamaha mention is a typo. The text is fixed now.
Oops. I made that change, because the original text said “Spitfire”. I got the wrong brand though.