This Rekord has gained a reputation as an interim model, not least because of the also for Opel short model life of just over one year and the big success of the successor. To design one has come up with very little indeed. Instead of round headlights front, there are now rectangular, instead of longish two round tail lights. Nevertheless, this car is by design seminal, cause the successor takes over both the front and the rear lights. Latter will be propagated further, to the Manta and GT. The Kapitän shares almost the complete front design with the Rekord B, only a little enlarged.
The real changes lie under the surface which remained relatively the same. Now e.g. the rear axle fits by more track to the body. With new engines Opel follows the call to replace the pre-war models. There is now a camshaft above lying quasi next to the valves, which operates in a series arranged valves via rocker arms. The wedge-shaped combustion chambers are maintained in principle. Intake and exhaust ports are on one side, so no cross-flow head.
Actually, they shorten drastically only the long pushrods. Thus, the masses are reduced, which a valve spring must move back. Also the maintenance-friendly nature of the valve timing is maintained. Oil pump and distributor no longer sit on different sides of a shaft, which is driven from the camshaft in a 90° angle and protrudes laterally out of the engine block, but at the front of the engine are combined with the main flow filter and the coolant pump to a kind of module.