The boss of Opel Australia says he would dearly like to add the Opel Adam to the local line-up, but admits the high level of customisation available to the city car complicates its business case.
Opel Australia managing director BIll Mott told CarAdvice at last week’s OPC launch that the Adam was a highly appealing model but one that may prove problematic to launch due to its inherent complexity.
“There’s no denying the success of the Opel Adam in Europe,” said Mott of the new model that notched up 20,000 orders in its first week on sale. “It’s selling in huge numbers, but nearly every car ordered is different and that will make it a challenge for us in Australia.”
“I don’t want to rule it out because there’s clearly a major ‘cool factor’ about the Adam, but trying to manage the personalisation of nearly every car sold could prove problematic from a delivery perspective.”
Opel Europe offers no fewer than 61,000 exterior combinations and near enough to 82,000 for the interior, from an almost infinite range of colours and trims to special items like a LED-lined headliner like that in a Rolls Royce Phantom.
Asked if there was any way he thought Opel Australia could build a business case for the Adam, Mott suggested offering a line of special edition cars with set specifications was one solution the brand would look at.
“Rather than offering such a vast array of trims as is available for Europe, we could look at a range of special edition Opel Adams with various exterior/interior combinations, but we would need to sit down and look at all the possibilities.”
The Opel Adam gets its name from Opel founder, Adam Opel, and shares its platform architecture with the city-sized Opel Corsa.
Unsurprisingly, the Adam gets a selection of small-displacement petrol engines ranging from 1.2- to 1.4-litre four-cylinders, the latter in two states of tune – a 65kW version and a more powerful 75kW unit.
Key to the success of the Adam is the arsenal of affordable tech features available for the car. Taking centre stage is the Intelli-link system, which integrates the driver’s smartphone (Apple IOS and Android only at this stage) with the car.
The Adam will also add Apple voice recognition software Siri Eyes Free soon for even more connectivity.
