US Auto Giant Buys Stake in Adam-Opel

- BAZ Staff

By many measure, Adam-Opel, AG is Germany's most successful automobile manufacturer. Forced by the hyperinflation of 1920 - 1923 to close its Rüsselsheim factory, the Opel brothers spent the next year in the United States studying state-of-the-art heavy manufacturing methods. Since reopening their factory in 1924, Opel has sold over 100,000 of its popular Tree Frog automobiles. Utilizing a brand new and thoroughly modern 45-meter long "moving assembly line" manufacturing system, Adam-Opel has steadily reduced the price of its automobiles from an average of DM225,000 in 1922 to less than DM2,000 today.

Last year the successful family firm, founded in 1862 to produce sewing machines, became a public stock corporation. On Friday last, it was announced at company headquarters in Rüsselsheim that Adam-Opel had formalized its contacts with the U.S. automobile industry and that American automobile giant General Motors had agreed to purchase 80 percent of the German company's stock for $26 million (DM160 million). This gives the American company effective control of Adam-Opel, although the joint announcement stated that no changes are planned in either management or production plans.