For my first People&Cars report, I managed to catch my friend Josip Miljak and his Rex.
Rex is in fact Opel Adam Record E2* from 1984. (*markings A,B,C,D,E, mk1, mk2 and similar usually designate the generation of the car).

Before everything, here’s Josip’s story.

“Records were our cars since 1992. After all Fiat’s 750 and Zastava’s you can imagine what kind of a feeling is to sit in 2.0 Record with 110HP.  In 2009 my brother has passed his driving exam and from dad he got Record as well, but 2.2 115HP.
Few months earlier another one arrived, this time in red color, and then another one in blue. Those Rex’s were in bad condition, so they have been disassembled for the parts. They still sit in the attic. At Christmas 2001. my dad had an accident. On the crossing some guy rammed his car all the way to the back seats. Luckily the car had a tow bar that presumably saved his life (that’s why my car has a tow bar as well!). In that period we got Omega 2.5 V6 and we were talking about saying farewell to Rex… Few months it was in classifieds for 600€, but dad was secretly talking with potential buyers, sending them away, until someone offered us 500€ on the spot, that was like a slap in the face for us. Dad and I decided that what everybody was expecting, Rex is getting a lifetime garage accommodation.
Btw: Rex was in fact a working car (dad had a plumbing, heating, cooling company from the 80’s), it hauled a trailer, gone through thousands of miles and remained in perfect condition, which says how tough the car is. My dad never got in the car dirty after a dirty job.

I remember my whole childhood through Rex, traveling to Austria, Hungary, my old man returning from the battlefield and field work… As if it was yesterday when I could sleep on the rear seat on the road, stretched out along the entire length, like in the bed. I remember frequent answer to my question: – Dad, how do you call this car?
The answer always was: Opel Airplane.

It is part of the family – so we have renovated it, gave him new clothes.”

And now a few technical details:

Purpose: big family car (or with better options for businessmen from 1984.)
Engine: C18NV= 1.8 OHC- 74 KW  with fancy Getrag 240 gearbox
Weight: 1685 kg
Acceleration: from zero to speed limit, enough but if lacks 20 hp to be ideal
Interior: living room equipped with armchairs and small wood fire place
Tuning: Few bits and pieces borrowed from more powerful models
Styling: big wheels, front lip, hidden antenna, lowered and few details

When I look at the cars on the road, I’m looking only the outer appearance, but more important to me is his interior and how I feel when I sit in it. Naturally, I watch that through my vision of ideal car, it has to be comfortable and sportish at the same time. And Record is exactly like this, it has everything it needs – big spacious front, air blowers everywhere, soft sofa-like seats, armrests… Of course it has servo steering, electric windows and all other retro thingamajigs that where high class back then. Bunch of new cars have a generic sole-less interior, so this Record is a real refreshment.

Only “luxury”that was always important to me it is tacho gauge, Car without tacho is like eating an ice-cream without cone. Any ice-cream is better than no ice-cream, but the cone gives more complete feeling.
Oh and yes, the engine can go in red and not explode so that is a nice feature to have.

German aftermarket styling – this cross sign can be usually seen on whole bunch of German cars. If anyone wants to know – this is insignia of the German air forces from the 1920’s.

Engine bay is nicely filled with a bunch of stuff. Currently, 1.8 is inside, but what the owner really want is to put 3.0 12v with 170HP or 3.0 24v with 204HP or even 2.0 turbo 205HP.
Btw. those are all inline engines. Opel Senator is basically the same car with more powerful engine.

This is not the only car with special needs like this, but I don’t exactly know what were they trying to say, you probably won’t put some weird derivative inside your engine, but then again, maybe then there was no quality control like today is.

Rex has 9jx16 Borbet rear rims with stretched tire, fronts are little more on the normal side measuring 7½j x16. Because of big and low tires and since the car is lower, you need to watch out for road pits, roots, leafs, bananas, and generally everything bigger than a walnut. But there is a difference from usual lowering setups with short stiff springs, this one has normal stiffness, so the car will probably feel like a boat on fast turns (on a raceway), but on the normal road and in normal condition it will be comfortable what is the main purpose of the car, cruising along without rampage.

Click below to see more photos!