Opel is a very old company and its “Blitz” logo (you know, with a lightning bolt through a circle) is a huge part of its heritage. But it was a bit of a weird road to get there.
Opel has had enough different badges in its 161-year history to make your head spin. The company started with sewing machines, but the “Blitz” name was first used in 1866 on a bicycle crest, in concert with “Victoria” – suggesting speed and victory. On two wheels.
Fast-forward past many very different brand-badges to 1930, and Opel wanted a five-letter name for its new truck division. It ran a competition throughout Germany that garnered 1.5m entries… and the winning suggestion was Blitz.
The “Opel Blitz” badge was simply the two names joined together at an angle that resembled a lightning bolt, although it wasn’t necessarily supposed to be that.
Meanwhile, over in Opel car-land, the company had raced through about a dozen different (again, very different) badges by the mid-1930s. From 1937 it introduced a new one that featured an airship-like shape surrounded by a circle, which was eventually simplified into a rocket (the company dabbled in rockets through the 1920s and ’30s).
That theme evolved through smooth shapes until 1963, when the rocket became quite angular. And then almost straight away, in 1964, that hard-edged graphic became the iconic lightning bolt for the Kadett small car.
Post Second World War, Opel had moved the Blitz name into the background (for obvious reasons), but with the new logo’s theme of speed inspired by that 1866 bike badge and the shape of the lightning bolt mirroring the original truck brand, the new logo was referred to as the Blitz.
And… then the company changed it at least 10 more times, until the latest iteration was revealed this year. But the basic shape and theme has stayed the same.
