2.0i GT
Every car enthusiast has a guilty pleasure, a car that he or she secretly likes, but it might be better to keep that to themselves. Stéphan Vermeulen has a preference for sleepers, cars that certainly did not exude dynamism and speed, but were still nice and fast. The Opel Kadett sedan 2.0i GT is one of his guilty pleasures and here you can read why.
How impressed I was as a 7-year-old when I saw the E-Kadett for the first time! Due to its streamlined curves, the style break with its angular predecessor was enormous. That was really big news in 1984. Having just recovered from the Audi 100 and Ford Sierra smoothed in the wind tunnel, as a budding car enthusiast I saw that new play of shapes trickling down to the lower segments. Everything for the lowest possible CW value! There was only five years between the rear-wheel drive C-Kadett and the new E-Kadett, which was front-wheel drive just like the intermediate model… it seemed like twenty! I understand that the new model was a bit of a shock for those who had been driving an Opel Kadett for years and that was quite a lot of people in those days. However, the Kadett with its round shapes was also appreciated and, like all its predecessors, it continued to top the Dutch sales lists. We Dutch had an intense love for the burgermansbak; no curve could change that. Fortunately, a sedan also appeared for the really conservative Kadett drivers, who found the drop too avant-garde.
The craziest Opel Kadett E, the sedan.
But I didn’t think that model was that successful. Who would stick such a square butt on an otherwise mainly round hatchback? I got older and I started to develop more and more into a car nerd. Memorizing yearbooks full of specifications, effortlessly reciting horsepower and 0-100 times when seeing a certain car… I had to put driving myself out of my mind for the time being, but dreaming of fast acceleration and high top speeds was possible. already. For example, at the end of the 1980s, a photo of the Opel Kadett Sedan 2.0i GT caught my eye. The model that even smelled like stale Brussels sprouts in the brochure and where you could imagine all that crocheted toilet roll holder on the parcel shelf, turned out to be capable of impressive performance thanks to the 116 hp engine from the eight-valve GSi! In my mind’s eye I saw that good four-door rocketing to 100 km/h in the specified acceleration time of exactly 9 seconds. That was just fast then. It all comes back to the surface and I now know for sure: my love for fast fools has its origins in this car: the Opel Kadett Sedan 2.0i GT!
An Opel Kadett sedan with the engine of the eight-valve GSi, the 150 hp 16V of the fastest Kadett GSi, is not delivered in the four-door model.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl