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The first Opel Kapitän - innovative, virtuous and successful

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Created on September 1, 1983

Text:

Eckhart Bartels

Photos:

Archiv Opel / General Motors

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Archiv

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Archiv Opel / General Motors

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Archiv

12

Opel Kapitän (1938) - Pre-war upper-class sedan

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Opel Kapitän (1949) - on the cover of the sales brochure

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Opel Kapitän (1939) - and its ancestors

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Opel Kapitän (1938) - available in two- and four-door versions

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Opel Kapitän (1939) - in an advertisement from the time

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Opel Kapitän (1938) - not unlike American products of the time

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Opel Kapitän (1949) - exhibited at the 1949 Motor Show as the "Captain", circular instead of crest-shaped headlight lenses distinguish it from the 1939 model

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Opel Kapitän (1949) - in all its glory

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Opel Kapitän (1950) - the spare wheel was located behind the trunk lid

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Opel Kapitän (1951) - a magnificent limousine

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Opel Kapitän (1951) - the Kapitän owner usually drove himself

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Opel Kapitän (1949) - feudal interior

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Opel Kapitän (1951) - with plenty of space in the trunk - note that the spare wheel is no longer under the lid

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Opel Kapitän (1951) - the six-cylinder engine

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Opel Kapitän (1950) - in an advertisement from the time

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Opel Kapitän Cabriolet (1953) - most beautiful open-top

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Summary

Between 1938 and 1953, Opel offered the first Kapitän, a modern yet robust vehicle with a self-supporting body that combined American characteristics with European engineering experience and sold over a hundred thousand units on the market. This report tells the story of the successful Opel luxury class model and shows it in three original brochures and in pictures and advertising illustrations from the time.

This article contains the following chapters

The successful Opel company
Important export markets
American role models
Elaborate and expensive development of the Kapitän
With a self-supporting body
Intensive test phase
Far-sighted equipment details
Only one instrument cluster
Plenty of storage space
Innovative and economical
Robust and fast
Continued success after the world war
The American opportunity
Success abroad and under the name Captain
Popular captain with status value
Updating the tried and tested
The not really new "new" Kapitän
Popular classic
Further information

Estimated reading time: 9min

Preview (beginning of the article)

When Opel presented the new Kapitän in December 1938, the car was already two years old. The new design had been put through its paces in long-term trials before the green light was given for series production. At the beginning of 1939, the press spokesman of Adam Opel AG was proud to announce that seven times the production of 1932 had been achieved in the past year. 114,000 cars, 26,000 vans and trucks - a considerable number of vehicles compared to the other twelve German automobile factories. In 1938, these had produced a total of around 165,000 passenger cars, spread over more than 50 models, i.e. around 3,000 units of each type. At Opel, the average was no less than 28,500 per model.

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