The Opel Speedster, otherwise known as Vauxhall VX220 in some markets, was a re-engineered Lotus Elise to allow GM Europe to produce a ‘halo’ sports car with minimal investment. The contract was for a fixed number of vehicles powered by a GM Europe powertrain, and the only extension was to add the turbocharged engine edition.
This was the second such programme, after the Opel Lotus Omega / Vauxhall Lotus Carlton – which was closer to existing GM Europe products.
Lotus sought to create more niche vehicles, but GM and GM Europe were not willing to repeat the experiment.
The main challenge is a low tooling investment programme with relatively low production numbers is going to struggle to match the panel gapping, durability and functionality of the mainstream mass market model programme. So, it’s harder to sell a vehicle which is a Lotus to either Vauxhall or Opel customers who expect lots of mundane things to be present – when they were not. Stellar ride and handling was not enough.
The quality demands made for the GM Europe vehicles were much more stringent than for Lotus, which means enthusiasts know the better buy is a Speedster or VX220. Vauxhall Opel then did not follow up with anything, so allowed this project to stand alone. If GM Europe had been more serious, they would have repeated the project at least twice more, and made a fortune with the third generation. Nothing like the Speedster / VX220 existed in the range, so this was in effect building a new market segment for GM Europe.
However, GM Europe was on the ropes, not selling enough mainstream models, had excess production capacity and needed to cut costs. So, once the Lotus contract was complete, it was not renewed – even though the money saved as insignificant in terms of the overall GM Europe operation costs.
