Opel Vectra

This is the catalogue record of the Opel Vectra, one of 239 models Opel has placed in the historical record and one of more than seventeen thousand cars the MotorJury library tracks. The record places its introduction in 1988. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

To read the Opel Vectra properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1980s were the decade of turbocharging, electronic fuel injection and the first mass digital engine management — Group B rallying and hot hatches defined its performance culture. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Subaru Subaru Legacy, the Ferrari Ferrari F40, the Mazda Mazda MX-5 — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Opel Vectra reads like this: the record lists its engine as unbulleted list | Petrol: | 1.4 L 14NV I4 | 1.6 L C16NZ/E16NZ/16SV/16LZ2/X16SZ I4 | 1.8 L 18SV/C18SV/E18NVR/C18NZ I4 | 2.0 L 20NE/C20NE/20SEH I4 | 2.0 L 20; kerb weight is recorded at 997 - (4-cyl petrols); drive goes through 5-speed Manual transmission / manual (F10/5, F13/5, F16/5, F20/5) / 6-speed Getrag manual / (F28/6) / 4-speed Automatic transmission / automatic; the layout is Front-engine, front-wheel-drive/four-wheel-drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.

Its place in the Opel story

Within Opel's own catalogue the Opel Vectra sits alongside the Opel Sintra, the Opel K-180 (1974), the Opel Combo, the Opel 10/18 PS. The record names the Opel Ascona / Vauxhall Cavalier / Holden Camira / Holden Apollo (Holden Vectra) as its predecessor and the Opel Insignia as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Wayne Cherry. Assembly is recorded at unbulleted list | Germany: Eisenach | Germany: Rüsselsheim | Belgium: Antwerp | Brazil: São Caetano do Sul (1993–1996) | Egypt: 6th of October City (GME; 1994–1996) | England: Luto.

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

From catalogue to ownership

The catalogue records what the Opel Vectra was; the ownership database records what it is like to own. MotorJury computes a verdict for every model year the United States federal record covers — complaints, recalls, real economy — refreshed nightly, with no opinions involved. If this car reached the American market, its verdicts are in there.