Back when Opel was owned by GM…
The very best of motor sport engineering applied to a road car, a tempting concept that was born into Opel’s motor sport department in 1999. The idea was a natural next step after the company showed an Astra Coupé race car design study, then a vision of the competition car planned for the new DTM (German Touring Car Masters) championship, at the Essen Motor Show.
The rest of the story is well known: with Opel and Mercedes as the driving forces be-hind it, the extremely popular DTM championship was reborn in 2000 with new cars and new regulations. Opel’s commitment was rewarded by a successful season’s racing, with eight wins from 16 starts, and the championship runners-up title. Then came the 2001 Geneva Motor Show, and the supersport design study Astra Coupé OPC X-Treme, a racing car for use on normal roads. It was developed and built under the supervision of Opel Performance Center GmbH (OPC), a subsidiary company, estab-lished in 1997, responsible for the Opel´s European motor sport activities and the de-velopment of exclusive Opel-based high-performance automobiles.
The X-Treme not only became one of the fastest sportscars when it first turned a wheel, but even prior to this, in terms of rapid development work. Come the end of the first DTM race season the OPC engineers and Opel’s designers needed only seven weeks, in close cooperation with the International Technical Development Center (ITDC) in Rüsselsheim, to create a ready-to-run car based on the DTM Astra Coupé
The high-tech sportscar’s overall concept is based on the DTM car: the safety bodys-hell has gull-wing doors, a spaceframe and various exceptionally rigid components reinforced with carbon fiber. Its 4.0-liter V8 engine, with four valves per cylinder, drives the rear wheels through a sequential-shift six-speed, transaxle gearbox. The wheels are suspended on double wishbones and there are carbon-fiber disk brakes at the front and rear. In the course of development work, however, at least half of the car’s components were either modified or redesigned for road use. ‘We shifted the accent from pure functionality for racing application to one that could embrace the new tasks that the car would face in its road-going form,’ says Opel’s design director for compact cars, Martin Smith. Of this project, which was brought to such a rapid conclusion, he says: ‘I was highly impressed by the way the technical, design and marketing people worked together so constructively.’
(source: supercars.net)
CC2 Specs
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