Opel Astra GTC Paris Concept

Probably an old news, but it deserves its place in the modern history of Opel as it Paris Concept car served as the basis of new Opel Astra J GTC OPC (or VXR from Vauxhall side), a front-wheel drive car with great characteristics and driving abilities.

So, in 2010, at the Paris auto show Opel presented the GTC concept car, which was very close to the real production design and would see light the next year in the form of Opel (Vauxhall) Astra J GTC.

 

The GTC is a compact, 3-door hatch for five with a coupe-like roofline. It measures 4.46 meters long, 1.84 meters wide, 1.48 meters tall and incorporates modern Opel design cues like the "blade" running along the rocker. Inside the concept are some optional race-inspired Recaro seats - a real beauty in my opinion.

 

There are also LED daylight running lights / tail lights and huge 21-inch rims. Opel design VP Mark Adams says, "We wanted to express the most emotional side of the Opel brand and we believe this vehicle creates an appropriate visual impact to reinforce our dynamic sporty character."

 



Under the hood is a turbocharged 2.0-liter 4-cylinder engine with direct injection hooked up to a 6-speed manual transmission with an electronic limited slip differential and a start/stop system. The engine produces a massive 280 horsepower along with 400 nm of torque. That's really a lot for a front wheel drive car.

The chassis is Opel's famous FlexRide and OPC's power steering is also driven by belt. All of this helps OPC model to have one of the best driving characteristics for a stock front wheel drive car, with no over steer, under steer or torque steer.

Below you can see a short picture gallery of this beautiful car.



Created with flickr slideshow.  

First Post: Introducing Blog about Opel

Hello, this is our first post on the new fan blog, dedicated to Opel & Vauxhall, as basically most of their cars are the same, with the only difference in the position of steering wheel :)

The blog covers mostly news from Opel & Vauxhall new cars and technologies, rare pictures/images & videos.

But there are also many great things in Opel's history which deserves to be well described and documented. One of such things will be blog post series about C20XE, Opel's legendary engine, which despite its age, is still very popular in motorsport as well as in just normal engine swaps.

So stay tuned!