From Spider to Fastback: Opel Kadett Vignale
08/04/2023
One year after Carosserie Italsuisse , Carrozzeria Vignale also presented a sporty open-top two-seater based on the Opel Kadett. However, the interpretations could hardly have been more different. The red Spider with the light brown interior, which the Italians presented at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1965, was much racier and more angular than its rounded Swiss predecessor in innocent white. Even the headlights were square.
But while Pietro Frua is known as the creator of the Italsuisse Opel, the exact origins of the Vignale line are uncertain. It probably goes back to Virginio Vairo, who took over the stylistic direction of Vignale from Giovanni Michelotti in 1962. Funnily enough, the Italian open-top Kadett looks almost more like a Frua design than the actual Frua Kadett in its whimsical and pretty way and could also be a model-maintained Glas GT.
For the Turin Motor Show in November 1965, Vignale converted the Spider into a fastback coupé, painted it bright yellow and finished the interior in dark green material. The profile in particular of the Spider anticipated the lines of the Kadett C coupé presented eight years later. In contrast, the upper half of the unchanged front was more reminiscent of the Ford Capri. The idea of the bumper running through the middle of the cooling air vent was taken up by the Shelby GT-500 in 1968.
Sometime after its trade fair appearances in Europe, the Vignale-Kadett must have made a detour to the Pontiac dealer Colonial in Miami, as a sticker on the rear indicates, before it entered the collection of Prince Rainer of Monaco in 1971. The one-off remained there until a collector from southern Germany acquired it in March 1997 with the intention of restoring it. Has the project now been completed? The last public signs of life of the coupé are already 25 years old.
