This is possibly the first time that Opel has consciously reached down. Not that there haven’t been affordable Opels before. The German brand has had decade upon decade of the Corsa, for instance, while other models such as the Karl and the Adam were designed to be either affordable but chic, or just plain old affordable.
This is the first time, though, which I can remember, that Opel has moved at least a little bit away from its long-held self-image of a quasi-premium German brand, and is aiming its new car at bargain-bucket buyers who would otherwise buy a Dacia.
This new car has an old name − Frontera − once applied to a badge-engineered Isuzu in the 1990s, which gave Opel its first SUV long before that term was even invented, or at least popularised.
Revived for this new model, the 2025 Frontera (we’re driving it now but it won’t actually go on sale in Ireland until April) is no longer a competitor for a big Land Rover, but instead is a compact crossover which tries
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