Opel Adam a tough sell for Australia

It's being hatched in Europe to a busy baby-car market but it's too early to tell if Opel's new car will develop enough to make it here.

The Opel Adam - a twist on the company originator's name, Adam Opel - is the first new nameplate from Opel since the Insignia of 2008. Opel Australia says the Adam - a three-door car the length of aHyundai Getz - isn't confirmed for sale in Australia. But the company says "it's something we will watch''.

"The complexity and number of options on this little car makes it a tough sell for Australia, with long delivery times and so on,'' says Opel Australia marketing boss Michelle Lang. "It is a great product though and if there is any way we can see an appetite for it here, I'll be pushing for it.'' The car was this week unveiled in the UK and shows that Opel sister company Vauxhall has adopted a fun attitude to marketing Adam.

It hits the UK in three trim levels - Jam (for fashionable and colourful), Glam (elegant and sophisticated) and Slam (sporty). The fashion-led philosophy allows customisation of up to one-million different combinations. Vauxhall claims this gives the Adam the ability to be personalised in more ways than any other mass-produced car.

It has 12 body colours including Purple Fiction and James Blonde, with three contrasting roof colours - I'll be Black, White my Fire and Men in Brown. Then there are three option packs - Two-tone Black or White Pack; flamboyant Twisted Pack; and bold Extreme Pack - and three external decal packages called Splat, Fly and Stripes.

Even the ceiling headliners come in three versions - Sky (clouds), Fly (autumn leaves) and Go (chequered flag) - and there are 18 interchangeable decor panels on the dashboard and doors, two of which are backlit by LEDs which Vauxhall claims is an industry first. It has Opel's new IntelliLink infotainment system that connects a smartphone to the car and is the first system compatible with both Android and Apple iOS. It is the first Vauxhall to include new-generation Advanced Park-Assist that identifies appropriate parking spaces and steers the car into place.

 The UK will get the choice initially of three four-cylinder petrol engine specs - 52kW/115Nm 1.2-litre, 65kW/130Nm 1.4-litre and a higher-performance 75kW/130Nm 1.4 - but a three-cylinder, direct-injection turbo-petrol of about 1-litre will follow. There are no diesels and no automatic transmissions in Adam's satchel.

The car would match up against the Volkswagen Up - and its Skoda Citigo clone - and Hyundai i20, Mitsubishi Mirage and Nissan Micra, so needing a sub $14,000 price tag.