Cars
My drawing of my Opel Vectra GT 16V
 

My car is an Opel Vectra 2.0i GT 16V 5d -93/94 (registered fall -93, model year -94).

I've had this car since fall 1997. It has lots of nice features, like all the GT stuff and the C20XE 2.0i 16 valve DOHC engine with 150 hp (not the ecotec 16V), which gives the car almost nice performance. This engine has been used in racing in rally and track in many different Opels and Vauxhalls. It is still very potential engine e.g. in national 2WD rally championships. The DOHC cylinder head is designed by Cosworth. The Vectra GT 16V is almost identical to the Opel Calibra 16V, the only difference being the amount of doors, the body style and wheelbase. It's also equivalent of the older Vectra 2000 16V which was produced until 1992 (excluding the rear axle). There were 2 more powerful Vectra A's available, the 170 hp Vectra 2.5i V6 and the 204 hp Vectra 2.0i Turbo 4x4.

Picture of my Opel Vectra GT 16V from front Picture of my Opel Vectra GT 16V from back at winter
 
The Vectra doesn't have so much different names, like the Kadett had, but it was called Chevrolet Vectra in Brazil and Vauxhall Cavalier in the UK. The current ('96-) model is called Vauxhall Vectra like the Opel, but Opel took the Vectra name already to the previous model. In the UK the comparable model to the GT 16V seems to be called as Cavalier SRi 16V, which in fact was built by Opel. In Brazil the sports version of Vectra was called Chevrolet Vectra GSi having the same engine.

Here are some specifications and features of my Opel Vectra GT 16V:

Picture of a Opel Vectra GT 16V
Here is a Opel press picture of Vectra GT 16V 1993 from the Vectra brochure of 1993.

Picture of my Opel Calibra
This is a picture of my other car, an Opel Calibra Turbo 4x4 T315, which has around 300 hp power in the tuned C20LET engine. The engine modifications include worked cylinder head, big intercooler, EDS Phase 3 chip, and lots of other performance mods. The car has done 14.1s / 160 km/h on quarter mile with a bad start so far.

Picture of my Opel Kadett Picture of my Opel Kadett

This was my previous car, an Opel Kadett 1.3S LS -86. I had it since spring 1994 to fall 1997. In many other countries the same car has had many different names, such as Vauxhall Astra (UK), Pontiac Le Mans (USA), Daewoo Le Mans, Daewoo Racer, Daewoo Tracer, Daewoo Nexia, Chevrolet Kadett (Brazil), Opel Monza (South Africa) etc. The German Opel is in any case the original one. Daewoo manufactures it still in South Korea and elsewhere. Before that I had a Ford Taunus 1.6 (no letters here, the basic model!) -80 which I bought in 1987 and traded for the Opel in 1994. I drove about 100000 km with the Taunus in 7 years.

The Kadett had only minor modifications, one of them is the car audio system described in my audio+video page. The audio system is still in this car. The Kadett is in fact dark blue, although many people had mistaken it as black. Let's see what happens to this Kadett, because the other car of the new owner is a quite wild Opel Ascona 2.5E Turbo.

Here I'm behind the wheel in a -96 Corvette Collector's Edition in National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky at the Corvette factory (spring 1996):
This is the car which I drove from mid-January to March 1996, a -95 Ford Thunderbird LX V8 (4.6l OHC, 205HP)

 

Here are pictures of my father's car, a Volvo 940 -95 STW with the turbocharged B230FT engine (2.3 l, 135 hp, 230 Nm, low pressure turbocharger). These pictures were taken during the winter, in summer the car has the original alloy wheels on. It has some nice original accessories, like cruise control, A/C etc.
Here's also a picture of my father's previous car, which I have also driven quite a lot, a Volvo 240 GLT -86 with the B230E engine (2.3 l, 129 HP, 196 Nm). The car was still in excellent condition when it was sold fall '97.

I have here some cars of my friends that I have test droven and found fun:

 

My cousin Reijo Virtanen's -79 Opel Ascona 2.4i.
Mika Rantala's -94 Ford Mustang GT 5.0 Convertible. The first picture is taken by Mika in Texas, where he bought the car. The second picture I took on the day it was driven from the customs in Finland (and my old Opel). The third picture is taken on summer -97 during our holiday trip somewhere in southern France between Grenoble and Nice. He sold the car recently.

Here are some car related links

My Photo Manipulation of car pictures (local)
My pictures and lap times from Ahvenisto race track. (local)

Opel related links

Opel Club Finland
My Opel Vectra A web page (local)
Opel
German Opel Vectra fan-page
VIRTANEN Opel Racing team fast Opel Asconas
OPEL VECTRA GT 2.0i 16V from the Netherlands
-- Svenska GSi Klubben -- The Swedish Club for Opel sport-models
GSI from Hell A tuned Vauxhall Cavalier GSi from UK
Vauxhall Cavalier Home page Some information about Vauxhall Cavalier sport models in UK
Lexmaul Opel tuning parts
Sutii Opel tuning parts

Other car links

McLaren International
Pasi Isotalus's VEHICLE Bookmarks
Ferrari Official Web Site
© Ari Tamminen, ari.tamminen@iki.fi Revised Dec. 29 2000
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This page has been visited times after Aug. 26th 1999.