Opel Kapitän L
(1958 - 1959)
Car articles about Opel Kapitän L by year
The first Opel Kapitän was presented at the Geneva Motor Show in the spring of 1938, 75 years ago. This report summarizes the various Kapitän generations and shows them in pictures.
Opel presented the new Kapitän in 1958. With many improvements and American-style styling, the new luxury-class sedan went after customers, but buyers apparently liked the Opel Rekord more than the Kapitän, which is why the latter was revised again after just one year. However, the 1958 Kapitän certainly had many strengths, as Werner Oswald explained in his driving test for 'hobby'. This article reproduces the original wording of the test report at the time and shows the car in historical illustrations.
When hobby-Auto editor Werner Oswald compared the new Chevrolet Corvair with the Opel Kapitän P2 in December 1959, the future of the rear-wheel-drive American with its air-cooled six-cylinder boxer engine was still written in the stars. Oswald believed that it would cause a similar revolution in the automobile market as Chevrolet had once triggered when the Chevy overtook the Ford Model T. Oswald was quite wrong with his speculation, as was already recognized in the mid-sixties. This article reproduces the original text from 1959 and shows the two rivals from the GM Group in many archive photos.
Current market prices for Opel Kapitän L
4-Door Sedan, 75 PS, 2473 cm3
4-Door Sedan, 80 PS, 2473 cm3
4-Door Sedan, 90 PS, 2605 cm3
Hearse, 90 PS, 2586 cm3
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