is a/c possible in an Opel GT?

I just saw a gt sell for 10k and the paint and interior looked very good and stock. What really got my attention was that it had working a/c! I have always liked these cars since I saw one at a Buick dealer when I went with my dad to pick up his new car. While I was sitting in it I asked the salesman how much more a/c would cost. He said a/c was not available and told me to look at a Mercury Capri if I had to have a/c. This is Miami, a/c is a must. Wound up buying a Plymouth Cricket, more on that lump later.

Any opinions on a gt with a/c? I know it won't be fast and at 6 foot 3 it will be tight.

Thanks all

Richard

Richard. We must be close to the same age. I have nearly the same memory. My guess is that salesman didn't have any GT's with AC in stock at the moment. but he had a boatload of Mercury Capri's that he could give away!

This place apparently has complete AC units for GT's http://www.opelsunl.com/opel-gm.html

And Wikipedia says they were comfortable for people over six feet tall. Of course six feet was shorter back then than it is now.

Dwight

Buick/GM had a factory kit to add a/c to the Opel Mantas in the early 1970s. I had some work associates who had a few of those cars with said a/c and they said it worked pretty good. Odd thing was that it used the GM A-6 compressor, which was about 1/2 as long as the engine block it was mounted against. At the time, I suspected that that "power hog" compressor would severely decrease the car's performance, but it was claimed to not have that much affect upon it. When I drove my uncle's '74 Manta couple, with automatic transmission, I found it to perform pretty well, especially when I determined that manually-shifting the automatic trans to raise the shift points several hundred rpms suddenly made it much more lively and quicker!

In more modern times, there's a substitute compressor which has less power-consuming "guts" which is a direct bolt-in for the GM A-6 compressor. Sanden also has a "back plate" for their compressors which is configured for factory GM hose connections, as the A-6 has!

In those earlier times, many import cars were imported without "factory a/c", but there usually was a "factory a/c kit" which the importer or dealership might install. All the way up into some of the later Chev GEO models, too.

I believe a pre-cursor of the Manta coupe was the Opel GT coupe? Or was the Opel GT coupe the Corvette-style performance Opel? If the former was the case, then I know there was a factory kit for a/c. If the latter is the case, then it might have been more of a packaging issue than anything else . . . just as with the Plymouth SuperBird/Dodge Daytona cars not being available with factory a/c (due to air intake/flow issues for the radiator).

Just some thoughts,

NTX5467

Yes they did make the GT with air. Stock setup had a kind of funky looking addition to the center console for vents. Those are getting fairly hard to find! Pretty sure there are a few making an aftermarket unit that will work. Hope so...would like to add it to our 73...but not quite to that point yet.