Thank you for your note - great to hear that others are as excited as we are about launching Opel in Australia.
I am still located in Rüsselsheim but will be relocating to Melbourne at the end of October to take on the role of MD Opel Australia. Let me address your questions one by one....
1. staying in touch with Opel: please visit our website http://www.opel-australia.com.au/flash.html and register with us. You will be receive updates from us via e-mail and post.
2. Sharing current info: We invited 7 Australian journalists to spend two full days with us in Rüsselsheim and environs learning about Opel and driving our products. You should hopefully be seeing quite some coverage on our pending arrival down under. What we have confirmed is that we will bring Corsa, Astra and Insignia at launch. Although not confirmed, we are looking closely at the new GTC and our OPC range as these products fit well to the market and add some real excitement to our offer.
3. Our interest in your heritage vehicles: we took the journalists to visit our classic car centre here which includes one of every car Opel has ever built starting from 1899. It is impressive and one thing the journalists fed back to us was the importance of leveraging this heritage to also underline the long history and staying power of Opel - it may be a new brand to Australia, but it is certainly not a new brand. In this regard, I am very interested in understanding which cars your forum members have and where they are - once I get situated in Melbourne, I would enjoy having a chat.
4. Coming to NZ: our plan is to first establish the brand in Australia - then we will see further.
Look forward to speaking with you in the near future.
I tried registering, but it is currently only set up for Australian addresses, so I've responded asking for that issue to be addressed. Overall, it sounds very positive, and you can see some of the cars to be offered on the website - much more exciting than the current Asian products......