Opel cars have been sold in Australia since the 1970s, but most buyers were unaware of them because they invariably carried Holden badges.

Opel is a German marque but has been controlled by General Motors since 1929 and GM-Holden either locally assembled Opel models or imported them as completely built up vehicles with Holden nameplates.

The best example of the locally assembled Opels is the Holden Commodore. Visually these were all but identical to the German made cars, but they used Holden powertrains.

By far the best known Opels in Australia are the Holden Barina, that is sold in Europe as the Opel Corsa; and the Holden Astra and Vectra, which both retained their titles in this country.

During the early years of the 21st century Holden made the decision to cease imports of Opels and instead bring in Daewoos with Holden names from South Korea.

Holden’s arch-rival Ford chose to continue importing European Ford models, thus gaining valuable points in the prestige stakes.

Now Holden has taken an interesting new direction by announcing that it will again import Opels to Australia, but this time will use the name Opel rather than rebranding them as Holden.

Breaking the much anticipated news of Opel’s return during a press conference at the 2011 Detroit Motor Show, Holden’s managing director, Mike Devereux, said, “Opel presents a new opportunity for GM in Australia with a growing demand for German design and technology at affordable prices … [and] establish itself as a strong competitor in the growing premium European segment.”

Initially, three Opel models will be imported to Australia: Insignia, which is a large car and replaced the Vectra; Astra in its latest generation; and Corsa, which is quite a bit different to the Holden Barina models we saw here years ago.

The Insignia is of particular interest as it’s almost Commodore sized and could be seen by buyers looking for something out of the ordinary in large cars from the GM group.

At this stage Holden/Opel will only give the date of introduction of the European marque to Australia as “Early 2012”. Opels will be sold from separate dealerships to Holdens to give the German cars a significant point of difference between the two marques.