Business & Finance: Opel of Russelheim

Said Geheimrat* Wilhelm von Opel, gruffly, last week:

“I do not know how this report came into the public light. The capital stock of the new Opel company will amount to 60,000,000 marks and these will remain in the possession of my family.”

All Berliners knew, of course, of what Geheimrat von Opel was grumbling. From the great Opel works at Russelheim (between Frankfort and Mayence) there pour into Germany more than 250 cheap automobiles daily. Opel builds the cheapest, most standardized of all German cars. And, as a result, Opel has cornered more than half the German market. Other producers (Daimler-Benz, “Nag,” Hansa-Lloyd, Adler, Horsch, Magirus, “NSU,” Gothaer Waggon, Bayrische Motoren) call Opel the “General Motors of Germany.”

Many a distinction exists, however, between G. M. and Opel for G. M., began as a motor car producer, is only 20 years old. But Adam Opel began making sewing machines in Russelheim when Yankee volunteers retreated from Bull Run. Early in the 80’s Founder Adam bought an English bicycle for his son, and in 1886 added a bicycle factory to the Opel works! Clever merchandizer, he knew selfconscious Germans would hesitate to appear ridiculous. Accordingly, he provided Opel halls where amateurs might learn to ride Opel bicycles. The Opel cycle factory is today the largest in the world.

It was not until 1902 that the Opel works were ready to turn out their first all-German automobile. It had two cylinders, a cardan-shift drive. Three years later, Opel engineers developed machines of 45 to 50 horsepower. Automobile production became the chief business at Russelheim. And when fire destroyed the sewing-machine plant in 1911, it was not rebuilt. The new Opel’s concentrated on bicycles, motor cars.

Latest and most spectacular of all Opel experiments is the low, winged rocket car. Inventor Valier, Builder Sanders, tried it secretly last April over the Opel tracks in Munich. But in June, young Fritz von Opel, sporting son of a gruff Geheimrat, sent it at a speed of 156 miles per hour over railroad tracks near Hanover. Nine-foot streaks of flame from the exploding rockets trailed its deafening roar. A solitary cat, its only passenger, trembled. Suddenly it skipped the track; the remaining rockets blew up; cat and car burst into a thousand blazing fragments. Spectators cried, “Devil Car.” U. S. women wrote lengthy, passionate letters.* Last week, the German automobile industry heard alarming reports. Persistent were the rumors that the Opel family would sell control of” “General Motors of Germany” to General Motors of the U. S. Angry nationalists, worried competitors, planned an automobile trust to battle U. S. production methods. Daimler-Benz began to dicker with the Belgian Minerva.

Geheimrat von Opel issued vigorous denials. But Berlin newsgatherers heard and published that the price paid by G. M. for Opel would be $35,000,000.

* Privy Councillor *Cat-killer von Opel received 600 letters. Most of them expressed the hope that he, von Opel, would meet a precisely similar fate.