Mk2 Astra Motorsport factory colours

[ant]

Something I never thought of till today. When I built my Opel it was pretty obvious it was going to be the black, silver and yellow. I am about to take back a project that was a build I did many years ago with all the same development I did to my WRC replica but with my old 8v Race engine but with a F16CR with a Quaife ATB.

The owner has made it a Vauxhall Astra GTE look alike and that made me wonder about the history/story behind the decals Opel/Vauxhall applied to the Mk2 for motorsport.

I guess my question is there any story here?

Why does the Opel and the Vauxhall have different colours?

Why does the Vauxhall's seem to have more variants in the use of the colours?

[ant]

v_a_gte.jpg

This how it looks today... I think when I put it together it was silver. he did a nice job... I'll get some side skirts and bonnet scoops I think.

[Danny]

Looks very nice, good job

[DarrenH]

ant its hard to simplify things, in the UK in the 1970s and early 1980s vauxhall didnt have their own motorsport department, the efforts were solely by DTV and bill blydenstien motorsport. Opel had their own outfit started by tony fall called dealer opel team (DOT) which later became opel euro team

after the GM merger and opel euro team finished their relationship with rothmans (with the ascona and manta) opel euro team were transferred to the milton keynes UK, vauxhall dealersport then GM dealersport popped out of the mould. To confuse things, the opel sport workshop in russelheims was retained and they were building the left hand drive kadetts (shells prepped by matter motorsport) In the UK they were building the right hand drive astras (shells prepped by gatrac) but all under the umbrella of GM dealersport or GM eurosport depending on the market, and sharing all the tech and even staff!

(deep breath!)

so as far as that is concerned we have 3 distinct liveries. vauxhall dealer sport started off with this red silver and yellow livery (this is a 1985 photo, the astra GTE was not homolgated until jan 1985) they were still using this colour scheme in 1987 to distinguish the UK built cars



early days in germany (1984 to 1986 period) you had opel euro team and opel sport who were doing their black silver and yellow thing



then the motorsport outfits were unified to GM dealer sport and GM eurosport in 1987 (i have the BS paint codes for this livery, but not the above ones) i think the first year that both opel and vauxhall were using this same scheme is 1988 onwards