The Buick Opel by Isuzu

A 1976 Buick Opel by Isuzu. Photo by TuRbO_J, found here.

Believe it or not, the Buick Opel by Isuzu, despite having three brand names from three different continents, is entirely the work of one manufacturer, GM. For the uninitiated, Buick is one of GM's core brands in the USA, Opel was their German subsidiary from 1929 to 2017, and in 1972, GM entered into a partnership with the Japanese automaker Isuzu.

 

Since 1958, GM had been importing a limited selection of Opel models to the USA and selling them at Buick dealerships - hence the moniker "Buick Opel". The primary model they sold was the Kadett, a compact car that competed with the VW Beetle. 

By the 1974 model year, the Kadett was on its third generation, built on a brand-new GM platform known as the "T-Car". The T-Car was GM's first attempt at using one platform for compact cars worldwide, and was developed in cooperation between GM's American home division, Opel, and Isuzu. In the USA market, the T-Car is perhaps best known as the Chevy Chevette, but it went by at least two dozen names worldwide. While the T-Cars did differ significantly in details and trim, the underlying vehicle was the same between all of them. 

The T-Car based Kadett was the last Kadett to make it to the USA, sold in the 1974 and 1975 model years as the Buick Opel. Unfavorable exchange rates between the Deutsche Mark and the U.S. dollar were making the Kadett-based Opel uncompetitively expensive, and for the 1976 model year GM decided to pull a switcheroo: take the Isuzu Gemini, Isuzu's version of the T-Car (when are they ever going to make a car called the Capricorn!), and slap the Buick and Opel badges on it. 1976 was also the year the Chevette itself went on sale, so you had your choice of the German, American, or Japanese T-Car - just not all at the same time.

The Buick Opel by Isuzu did not sell well - barely cracking 25,000 units in its best year, 1976 - while the Chevette would see great success, peaking at almost 450,000 sales in 1980. In 1979, the Buick Opel by Isuzu was discontinued. 

The Isuzu Gemini itself, however, would make a return to the USA in 1981, this time as Isuzu began selling cars under its own name in the region. Renamed the I-Mark (seriously, what was wrong with the name Gemini), the I-Mark would go into a second generation in 1985 and a third in 1990 (as the Stylus) before being discontinued in 1993.