The thickest Opel of that time in top condition
Because the big Opel is a thing of the past, we take a look at this mighty Opel Senator from 1982 in the classic range on this site. The thickest Opel you could get at the time is now for sale for €10,950. That may seem like a hefty sum, but it’s just under half of what it once cost new. And there are plenty of classics from that time that have to fetch more than when they were new in the showroom. Why are we singled out this Senator?
Well, because he partly tells the story of the great Opels. There were once, in the decades before, even gigantic sedans from the down-to-earth German brand, such as the Kapitän and the Admiral. However, at the end of the 1970s, Opel launched the Senator. Was it even bigger than the Commodore? Especially thicker, we would say. The Commodore was actually a Rekord with attitude and a six-cylinder, so that large sedan could have the 2.5 six-in-line from Opel, the Senator was there as a 3.0 in those days. In this flawless example, the 180 hp engine is coupled to an automatic transmission.
Monza was the Senator’s coupe brother
Are we there as far as large Opels are concerned in the early 1980s? No, there was also an Opel Monza, the coupé version of the first Senator. Especially when the Commodore disappeared, the Senator’s engine range expanded downwards.
Senator as a lavish gentlemen’s saloon
The Senator A we found is not even the most luxurious version. That was the CD. Yet a lot of opulence emerges when you look at the pictures of the interior! The red plush is reminiscent of the interior of a gentleman’s salon, it almost makes you want to smoke a fat cigar. Given the state of the interior, that has probably never happened in this top sedan, once newly delivered by Opel dealer De Jong in Gouda.
The dealer stickers are still on it, also so beautiful, it just says De Jong Gouda with the telephone number but not the area code, also the area code. You just have to know that 0182 as a local resident of Gouda and the surrounding area. There is even a pouch for the key with this copy with the dealer name on it.
Original Senator A rare
The Senator has wood strips on the inside, the aforementioned red seats in which you probably sink a bit and the odometer says 11,000 and a bit, but of course it has already been around once. 111,764 kilometers have passed under the original alloy wheels. Those wheels are also nice, because if you come across a first-generation Senator you sometimes see that larger, more modern wheels have been placed under it. Furthermore, this thick German sloop has a tow bar.
This 180 hp top sedan competed with the Ford Granada, but also the Audi 100 and the Mercedes W123, which you could get as a 280E as a roughly equally powerful six-cylinder. A Senator was always somewhere between a BMW 5 series and a 7 series, in those days the E28 was just new, the 7 series had been around for a few years and listened to the internal code E23. We deliberately do not mention the S-class of the W126 generation. He had already walked far from this level and was on a higher plane.
The Senator A received a facelift in 1983, with larger headlights being the most striking change, and was succeeded in 1987 by the B, a much rounder sedan that shared many components with the Omega, which was now presented as a Rekord successor.
Almost €11,000 for this beautiful piece of history from the heyday of Opel in the Netherlands, who is going to get it?
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl