by Ross Finlay (11 Feb 03)

In the city where I grew up, there was a story which, as a search of newspaper cuttings was claimed to reveal, swept through the populace almost with the regularity of the sunspots cycle.

Every few years, it was reported that an unidentified somebody's cousin's sister's grocer's acupuncturist (or whoever it was) had heard the frightening story of what happened to an attractive young girl, waiting to cross one of the city streets, after she offered to help an old lady across.

Halfway to the other pavement, the girl felt a sudden jab as the "old lady" plunged a hypodermic needle into her arm - and woke up in some unspecified location from which she was sold into what, in the earlier versions of the story, was described as the white slave trade.

There's a modern motor industry equivalent to this yarn, which I see has come out into the open again. It does the rounds regularly and, while treated seriously in some quarters, is completely ludicrous.

It's the suggestion that GM ought to ditch the Vauxhall brand and replace it in this country with Opel. Most Vauxhall models, the argument runs, are the same as the corresponding Opels anyway; the Opel name is much more appealing than Vauxhall's; Opel is a more exciting marque; the Opel badge is better; and GM would sell a lot more cars after the rebranding.

The first item is fair comment, of course, but the rest is pure gibberish.

No offence to the Opel family who founded the firm in the first place, but the name Opel is dull and dreary when spoken by a German, and doesn't exactly lift the spirit when pronounced by an English speaker.

Well, Okay, Rocket Science

Opel as a more exciting marque? Give us a break. You have to admire a company which in the 1920s built an experimental car powered by a collection of rockets. And Opel's DTM racers may be more muscular than Vauxhall's BTCC cars. But how many motorists here have given Opel a second thought since it skedaddled off the UK market in the 1980s? How many people in this country have even seen an Opel? Whose pulse rate rises at the thought of driving one?

The Opel badge is better? Nonsense! There's Vauxhall with a splendidly arrogant design based on genuine heraldic elements, while Opel has a zigzag affair meant to represent a bolt of lightning, but squared off at the ends, which reduces the visual impact almost to zero.

GM would sell a lot more cars after the rebranding - well, that's a load of rubbish too. Vauxhall is the number two make on the UK market, while Opel struggles in Germany. There's absolutely no reason to suppose that changing the name would improve the market share.

And think how much a rebranding would cost. Apart from the colossal expense of a long promotional and advertising campaign, every single retail dealership would have to be given a new livery, and if there's one thing dealers hate doing it's a lot of pointless redecoration. Altogether, we're talking tens of millions of pounds here, maybe more.

No, the Opel plan, however regularly it comes round, is the product of fevered imaginations or journalists/marketing consultants feeling the need to get something in writing on an otherwise dull day.

Over the years, conversations with Vauxhall people have made it clear that they're fed up hearing this kind of stuff. Of course, if an announcement is made within the next two weeks that Vauxhall is to be rebranded Opel, or Daewoo, or Buick, or Pontiac, or whatever, this column will disappear into embarrassed thin air, with spluttered denials that you couldn't possibly have read it here.

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