Opel's STX concept previews an Astra built around the estate body
The estate Opel invented in 1953 is down to a single car in its range
Opel and Vauxhall will unveil the STX Concept at the Paris Motor Show in October, and chief executive Florian Huettl has described it as a vision for the future of the wagon silhouette. It is also the first look at the ninth-generation Astra. Stellantis had listed the car on its Paris stand for weeks as an unannounced surprise, without saying what shape it would take.
Opel names its Paris surprise STX, for Sports Tourer eXperimental
The name abbreviates Sports Tourer eXperimental, borrowing the badge Opel already uses for the estate version of the Astra. Huettl announced it on LinkedIn rather than through a press release, days after Stellantis published a Paris line-up that mentioned an unnamed Opel concept and nothing more. The show runs from 12 to 18 October at the Porte de Versailles, where Stellantis has taken the largest stand of the event for eight brands and more than 60 cars. Opel is bringing the Corsa GSE and the final design of its GSE 27FE Formula E racer alongside the concept.
The X has meant crossover at Opel since the 2016 Mokka X
Opel spent five years using X to mark a car that had been raised: Mokka X in 2016, Crossland X and Grandland X in 2017, with the suffix quietly dropped again by 2021. Attaching it to Sports Tourer is the clearest thing the company has said about the next Astra's proportions. Huettl has been blunt about why. Speaking to UK media in June, he said the hatchback segment continues to decrease, with buyers flowing into SUV bodystyles from both directions as small cars mature and as family life changes.
Opel built 15,804 Caravans against 113,966 saloons by 1954
Huettl's claim that Opel pioneered the segment in Europe in the 1950s holds up. The Olympia Rekord Caravan arrived in 1953, a two-door estate on a reinforced rear axle rated to carry 550 kg, and the Caravan name stayed on Opel estates for decades afterwards. What the archive also shows is how small the body style was from the beginning. By September 1954 the Olympia Rekord had been built 144,485 times: 113,966 saloons and cabriolets, 6,258 vans and 15,804 Caravans. The estate was roughly one car in nine, and it asked DM 300 more than the saloon.
The Astra Sports Tourer is the only estate Opel still sells
Opel confirmed in February 2022 that the Insignia would end without a successor, blaming the collapse of the D-segment, and the Insignia Sports Tourer went with it. That leaves the Astra Sports Tourer alone in a range of hatchbacks, crossovers and vans, so reaffirming a commitment to the wagon silhouette currently covers exactly one car. The body style has been surviving at the cheap end of the market instead, which is why Dacia's Striker counted as news at all.
The next Astra is one of four new Opels due before 2030
Huettl has confirmed at least four new models before the end of the decade: the Astra, a new Corsa, a C-segment SUV developed with Leapmotor and a replacement for the Mokka. The Astra will sit on STLA One, the 800-volt modular architecture Stellantis unveiled in May to cover the B, C and D segments and to carry two million cars by 2035. It is not an electric-only platform. Huettl has said the next Astra will certainly be offered as a battery car, but that the rest of the powertrain range is still being calibrated. A 280 hp Astra is already confirmed for 2027.
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Opel is not saving the estate car. It is saving the Astra, and the estate is the shape it has picked to do it in. That is a better bet than it sounds. The Insignia went in 2022 because the D-segment collapsed, the hatchback segment is shrinking now, and a brand with four new cars due before 2030 has to put its best-known nameplate somewhere. A raised Sports Tourer keeps the load bay, the low roofline and a badge Opel has owned since the 1950s, and it costs Opel nothing it was not already spending on a crossover. Calling the result a proper estate may be generous. Building one at all, in 2026, is not nothing.
Paris opens on 12 October and ride height will settle this. If the STX stands within a few centimetres of today's Sports Tourer, Opel has kept its word about the wagon silhouette. If it turns up with the Frontera's ground clearance, plastic cladding and roof rails, the X has won and the ninth-generation Astra is a crossover with a long back. Huettl has already said elements of this show car reach production, so those proportions are not a free sketch. They are the next Astra, two shows early.
