Opel Confirms Manta-e For Production, Looks Like A Crossover Coupe

Yesterday was a busy day for all the brands of the Stellantis family, and Opel made no exception.

Dan Mihalascu

By: Dan Mihalascu

Jul 9, 2021 at 8:01am ET

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At the “EV Day 2021” event, the German automaker announced it would bring back the beloved Manta nameplate.

Obviously, the Manta’s third coming will be in the form of an electric car called Manta-e, and it will happen by the middle of the decade, as Opel/Vauxhall CEO Michael Loscheller confirmed. In a video posted on Opel’s YouTube channel, the executive also said the future production EV would be called the Manta-e and will enter series production by the mid-2020s.

“Opel will reinvent the Manta-e by mid-decade, and bring a very emotional car to the market that will excite our customers.”

In addition to these tidbits of information, Opel dropped a teaser rendering of the Manta-e which serves to temper purists’ expectations. It clearly shows that the electric Manta will not be a two-door coupe as the original car but a four-door crossover coupe.

After all, Ford did basically the same thing with the Mustang Mach-E, so why can’t Opel use an iconic nameplate from the past to market an electric crossover? That’s obviously a rhetorical question.

Anyway, it’s worth mentioning that the fine print at the bottom of the rendering reads “illustration not representative of production intent,” which means this is just a loose representation of the Manta e’s design direction.

No other details were released about the Manta-e, but you can be sure it will be based on one of the four electric vehicle platforms Stellantis announced on July 8. Our money is on STLA Medium or STLA Large, which are said to offer driving ranges of up to 440 miles (700 kilometers) from a 104-kWh battery and 500 miles (800 km) from a 118-kWh battery, respectively.

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The other two platforms are STLA Small (300 miles/500 km) and STLA Frame (500 miles/800 km).

Designed with a high level of flexibility in length, width, and component sharing, these platforms will accommodate a total of three electric drive modules (EDM) that combine the motor, gearbox, and inverter. The EMDs can be configured for front-drive, rear-drive, all-wheel drive, and 4xe.