When The Good Oil got its hands on the new all-electric Opel Corsa, the first thing to find out wasn’t range, charge rate or anything boring like that. No, the first thing we wanted to know was the location of the shark.
Now, while a few of you will be quietly smiling and nodding in agreement, there’s a pretty good chance that most of you will be wondering what we’re on about and need a friendly lesson on the legend of the Opel shark.
The shark first appeared in the Corsa D back in 2006. The official Opel story is that interior designer Dietmar Finger was designing the reinforcing ribs on the side of the glovebox door. One day at home he was casually drawing various shapes when his young son walked up to him and said “Why don’t you just draw a shark?”
So, Finger did just that. He showed his boss who immediately loved it and the shark in the glove box went into production.
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The unofficial story is that a few designers had a bet to see if they could sneak a shark in somewhere, which is less cute and wholesome, but either way a tradition was born and the shark has appeared in the Corsa ever since, as well as a number of other Opels, including the Astra and Insignia (the one that was sold here as Holden Commodore – remember that?).
These days it’s expected that the designer interior places one or two sharks somewhere within the interior.
Where the shark is placed is entirely the designer’s choice, and isn’t shared with the leadership. In fact, the location of the sharks is generally kept a secret all the way to the launch of the car.
Of course, the new Corsa has a shark that is quite visible in the centre console, but is there another one? We didn’t find it, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.