page_title: Opel
section_title: Logo
hierarchical_section_title: Opel / Marketing / Logo
caption_attribution_description: English: opel logo
context_page_description: Opel Automobile GmbH is a German automobile manufacturer, a subsidiary of French automaker Groupe PSA since August 2017. From 1929 until 2017, Opel was owned by American automaker General Motors. Opel vehicles are sold in the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands under the Vauxhall brand. Some Opel vehicles were badge-engineered in Australia under the Holden brand until 2020 and in North America and China under the Buick, Saturn, and Cadillac brands.
  Opel traces its roots to a sewing machine manufacturer founded by Adam Opel in 1862 in Rüsselsheim am Main. The company began manufacturing bicycles in 1886 and produced its first automobile in 1899. After listing on the stock market in 1929, General Motors took a majority stake in Opel and then full control in 1931, establishing an American ownership of the German automaker for nearly 90 years.
  In March 2017, Groupe PSA agreed to acquire Opel from General Motors for €2.2 billion, making the French automaker the second biggest in Europe, after Volkswagen.
  Opel is headquartered in Rüsselsheim am Main, Hesse, Germany.
context_section_description: The first Opel logo contained the letters "A" and "O" – the initials of the company's founder, Adam Opel. The A was in bronze, the O kept in red.
  In 1866, Opel expanded and started to produce bicycles. Around 1890, the logo was completely redesigned. The new logo also contained the words "Victoria Blitz" (referring to Lady Victory; they were certain of the triumph of their bicycles). The word "Blitz" (English: lightning) first appeared back then, but without a depiction.
  Another redesign was commissioned in 1909. The new logo was much more spirited and contained only the company name Opel. It was placed on the motorcycles that they had started to produce in 1902, and on the first cars which were produced in 1909.
  In 1910, the logo was the shape of an eye, and it was surrounded by laurels, with the text "Opel" in the centre.
  From the mid-1930s to the 1960s, passenger cars carried a ring which was crossed by some kind of a flying thing pointing to the left, which in some form could be interpreted as a zeppelin, the same flying object being used also as a forward-pointing hood ornament. In some versions, it looked like an arrow; in others, like an aeroplane or a bird.
  Besides the hood ornament flying through the ring, Opel also used a coat of arms in various forms, which mostly had a combination of white and yellow colours in it, a shade of yellow which is typical for Opel until today. One was oval, half white and half yellow. The Opel writing was black and in the middle of the oval symbol.
  The origin of the lightning in the 2012 Opel logo lies in the truck Opel Blitz (German Blitz = English "lightning"), which had been a commercial success, widely used also within the Wehrmacht, Nazi Germany's military. Originally, the logo for this truck consisted of two stripes arranged loosely like a lightning symbol with the words "Opel" and "Blitz" in them, in later, 1950s models simplified to the horizontal form of lightning which appears in the current Opel logo. The jag in the lightning always follows the original from the "Opel Blitz" text stripes, in the form of a horizontally stretched letter "Z".
  By the end of the 1960s, the two forms merged, and the horizontal lightning replaced the flying thing in the ring, giving way to the basic design which is used since then with variations. Through all its variations, this logo is simple and unique, and both easily recognisable and reproducible with just two strokes of a pen.
  In the 1964 version, the lightning with a ring was used in a yellow rectangle, with the Opel writing below.  The whole logo was again delimited by a black rectangle.  The basic form and proportions of the Blitz logo have remained unchanged since the 1970 version, which made the lightning tails shorter so that the logo could fit proportionately within a yellow square, meaning it could be displayed next to the 'blue square' General Motors logo.  In the mid-1970s, the Vauxhall "Griffin" logo was, in turn, resized and displayed within a corresponding red square, so that all three logos could be displayed together, thus signifying the unified GM Europe.
caption: 1862: Adam Opel's initials
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