#corsa

In all of my 35 years of exploring junkyards in the western United States, I had never found a Mexican-built, Mexican-market car until a few weeks ago, when I spotted this General Motors de México-manufactured 2009 Opel Corsa in a Denver-area self-service wrecking yard.

Opel workers, managers, German politicians and TTAC have been heard complaining that Opel is being kept out of interesting growth markets and pretty much forced to suffer in Europe. The perennial nags are being thrown a bone: GM “will build a small number of its Opel Corsa hatchbacks in Belarus from next year as its European brand seeks to diversify outside its core market,” Reuters says.

You wake despite the hope that you would never awake, in fear that the wildest night of your life with Corvair was all just a dream…ooops; never mind. But if a car ever inspired one to emote and wax poetically, it was the Corvair, especially the 1965. So I’ll try hard to restrain myself: the 1965 Corvair was the best European car ever ever made in America. And if that alone doesn’t explain the Corvair’s inevitable failure, lets just say that in 1965 Americans were eating a lot more Wonder Bread than baguettes.