The Opel Adam Rocks... does it?

Nifty member of the Adams family?

The Opel Adam Rocks is one nifty little car.  It is city-sized car in a cute and compact shape, young-person 2 doors, large sliding roof opening, funky lively colour, stylish big wheels, textured dashboard trim, and an overall appeal stretching to many.

How does the Rocks differ from other members of the Adams family?

The Rocks idea is to take the Opel Adam city hatch and give it some black protective cladding on the wheel arch extensions, along with different bumpers getting black inserts with some square-C-shaped chrome inserts, a raised ride height, and what Opel calls a swing top canvas roof.  Both bumpers even get silver under-body skid plates, just as you would on a cross-over or SUV.

The Rocks is slightly higher, sitting between regular cars and mid-size vehicles.  Driving around town means you are in a small car that is a bit higher, getting eye-level with medium-sized cars / smaller cross-overs.

The Opel Adam Rocks has a good high-quality feel – it is a small car which feels German-car solid, with premium materials (which cost money to produce) and an overall feeling that everything looks good now, and will keep looking good.

Examples of some interior style are the bright red indicator needles, backlit at night for a pure red vibrant instrument cluster, with red markings on the outer rim, set on a silver-grey backdrop, with the centre of the dials on a carbon-fibre look background.  AMG-like, one observer commented. 

The other style example is a great touch-point.  The dashboard trim background is matt black, with patterned star-like sparkles creating a creative textured everyone-will-rub-across-it surface.  Almost all occupants and observers could not help feeling the dashboard.

Goldbuster

The special colour is really worth a mention.  It is only the Adam Rocks that is available in this paint, called Goldbuster (a pun on the classic Ghostbusters movie).  The other 2 paints are as per other Opel Adam models:  Saturday White Fever and Red ‘n Roll, with tongue-in-cheek naming from old-school music.

A small car can carry a bold colour well, and what with white way too everywhere nowadays and red a bit racy, this goldish / yellowish / olive-greenish flip paint is absolutely perfectly suited to highlight the best of the Adam Rocks.  The bright trace line along the side window shapes and the gloss black panel with small stylish Adam Rocks badges look the fashion.

Where the lesser Adams-family members have 15, 16 or 17 (optional 18 on Glam) the Adam Rocks has 225/35 R18 tyres, which are rather large for its size.  These big propellor-style wheels have a black background for the outer rim, and 5 angled silver blades.  With big wheels and raised body plus slide-back roof, the Adam Rocks looks city chic meets country style, proper.

You want to look good and get noticed in your car, right, with street cred?  You want to make your mark in the crowd.  This car, in this colour, will do it!

Slide open roof

As the roof slides back rather than fold and pack away, when it is only partially open the canvas concertinas into a ruffled bulge on top, which does look a bit untidy.  Best to have it closed or fully open.  Seems they tried to copy the MINI Convertible which allows a sunroof-style partial slide open, but does not look as neat.

With the roof open, a rather large front wind deflector pops up.  This is effective for blocking wind from entering the cabin, but is also quite noisy at highway velocity, and being a bit too high, is unsightly.

Close the roof, and the sound/air insulation is as tight as per the solid-roof Adam hatch.  The added bonus witht the canvas roof closed is that you can drive a small hatch, with the enjoyment usually found only on much more expensive soft-tops:  hearing raindrops falling on the roof.

Nippy, for urban adventurers

The 999cc ecoFlex engine is made up of 3 cylinders and a turbo.  It is nippy around town and cruises wihout strain on the highway.  In addition to the regular 3-cylinder growl, it even emits a pleasant and sporty-sounding metallic resonance through the exhaust, which is entirely enjoyable. 

This little engine also makes a nice partner with a slick-but-solid shifting 6-speed manual gearshift, with very little engine turbo lag (that initial unresponsiveness found in so many small-engined turbo cars) in normal driving, but be weary of a 2nd or 3rd gear below 1-to-1500r/min, as the turbo can suffocate it, with the turbo giving torque (pulling power) when the rev counter is from 1800 to 4500.  Wind the Adam Rocks up a bit – stand still and rev the engine to mid-range, then smoothly-quickly release the clutch, when it can lurch forward with surprising zest for such a little engine.

Zip around town to meetings, restaurants, visit a friend (who shouted “Oh, give me that car!”) and run some errands, and the 2 trip meters show 7.7 and 8.4, which is still good for some enthusiastic driving in town, and with some gentleness, the claimed urban fuel consumption of 6.3 is not out of reach.  Combined, the claimed consumption is 5.0 l/100km.  The engine has auto stop-start to save more of the precious amber liquid (petrol) when standing still.  Should you feel unsafe to wait a red traffic light with the engine off (say, late at night / early morning coming back from that night out, or driving through a spot that looks a bit dark or dodge) this auto-off can be de-activated by a simple tap on the “eco” button, on the front passenger side centre console.

One criticism is that the on-board computer menu sits on the facing side of the left steering column stalk, needing your hand off the steering to scroll through menu items, rather than at fingertip control.  Fortunately the steering wheel has on-hand switches for cruise control, voice / Bluetooth control, and audio search and the regularly-used volume.

Set your temperature through the digital climate control, and leave it on auto.  If you want, the fan speed control has little red dots (rather than normal lines) in the ring-around, just for fun.

There are sports seats front and rear (sculpted) so 4 ample seats with no student-sardine cramming into the rear, upholstered in a coarse cloth with cross lines, and leather borders with white stitching.  Comfort, style, lekker.

The body cladding, compact size, energetic engine and bags of style make this the ideal urban adventurer car.

Ideal student car

A colleague who has her son in college this year quickly observed that the Adam Rocks is the ideal student car.  For sure, it is!  Daddy/Mommy, pleeeeease?  Some ammo for the convincing pitch is that most of the more normal (read “bland”) hatch cars on the market sell at R200k-R250k.  The Adam 1.0T Jam sells at R 230 700, but neither it nor the R 254 000 Adam 1.0T Glam has the equipment or looks the Adam Rocks has. 

Getting the cross-over personality across to a small hatch, with plenty of safety kit and all the high-tech equipment (see below) plus the open roof (that’s worth at least R 15 000 in itself) at R 287 100 is then a justifiable price.  No hidden extra costs.  The warranty is valid for 5 years or 120 000 km, and includes roadside assistance, while service costs are taken care of for 3 years / 60 000 km.

It is safe, Mom and Dad – the Adam Rocks has the latest ESP Plus stability control with accident-reducing ability, LED daytime running lights, and an all-disc braking system with ABS and EBD.  More safety + convenience features are rain-sensing wipers, auto on-off headlights, auto-dimming inner mirror, hill start assist, and even a tyre pressure monitoring system which not only shows you there is a tyre deflating/deflated (leaving you walking around the car to guess which one needs air) but displays in the instrument cluster the actual pressures per tyre.

Aimed at a young audience Opel calls Affluent Urban Adventurers, Opel got their priorities right with the Adam Rocks boot space, giving the subwoofer half the space of the tiny boot… who cares, as long as we have pumping sound!  To give you an idea of space, a take-away dinner for 8 that fit into 2 large carry bags nearly filled the boot.  Slide in a laptop or iPad, throw a gym bag and a packet of shopping – perfect.  That’s all a student / young person needs to drive along in a day.  Anyway, if you do need to carry more stuff, flop down the split rear seat/s and you have space.

The Adam is just 3747mm short, which is a bit longer than the MINI Hatch (the BMW Cooper shape, built 2002-2007).  The Adam is said to have a 170-litre boot, but it is most definitely smaller than that MINI’s 150-litre quoted capacity.  Having parked the Adam Rocks and a Cooper S side-by-side was proof.  Perhaps the Opel measurement is without the subwoofer?  Cubby hole?  What cubby hole?  They may as well have left it out.

How to open the boot?  Rather than swivel the whole metal badge downwards as you would on a VW or BMW rear logo, a simple touch on the Opel lightning blitz roundel activates the electric release switch.  Puzzle, then impress your friends.

A teenage rear-seat ride-along gave valuable commentary:  the rear headroom is generous, but the rear windows cannot open and there is no air vent to the rear.  The rear gets door storage spaces, and, generously, a row of 3 cupholders between the front seats, although this is probably intended for the 1 front passenger and 2 rear passengers.  Still, there is no front armrest to get in the way of student / young person priorities:  space for drive-through drinks or energy drink cans.

Tech savvy

The Adam Rocks comes standard with tech savvy crammed in, like the side mirror Side Blind Zone Alert which will light up a blinking or solid LED warning icon in the mirror when a vehicle is in your blind spot.

Park distance sensors front and rear will help you avoid any contact when taking advantage of those compact parking spaces where bigger cars cannot fit into.  Advanced Park Assist is standard.  Yay!  It works so easily, as a simple push of a button on the dashboard will have your Adam Rocks sniff out a parking spot.  This short car easily zips into and out of parking spaces, and the best part is it can do the steering for you for parking into parallel (in a row) or bay (side-by-side) parking spaces.  Like a boss.

Touch-screen.  A must-have nowadays.  In the baby Opel, the simple layout is touch for most controls, including a screen with touch-me icons, scroll-down menu, where the only off-screen marked touch areas are for volume up/down (for your front-seat friend) and a central power button, and a home icon switch on the right, to take you to home menu.

This hi-res 7-inch touch-screen is the Opel IntelliLink system, which sync’s with the driver’s phone apps (iOS and Android) and then displays the app info on the car’s screen.  Apps included in the car are Stitcher, TuneIn internet radio and Bringo navigation.  The front console has a good-sized space for your phone, and has a nearby 12V socket and, to listen to those tracks you downloaded, a USB port.

The Rocks also has Siri Eyes Free – this is a unique-in-class feature which lets the car integrate with later-generation iPhones and iPads via USB cable, to activate Apple voice control so you can ask Siri questions while driving (without holding your phone/tablet) just as you normally would.  Opel’s media release quips:  you won’t need to ask Siri what the best mini cross-over in the land is, because you already know the answer to that one.

Electric mirror adjuster mounted on the door panel, mounted sideways rather than flat in an ergonomic position.  To adjust, your co-ordination better be good – to adjust the mirror left, you have to push the adjuster forwards, and pull it back to adjust right.  A bit awkward.

Also look at…

Any suggested rivals?  While there are (too) many small cars on the market, only the Fiat 500, Citroën DS3, MINI 3-door and Opel Adam are also high-character cars.  The Fiat 500C, DS3 Cabrio and Adam Rocks all have a sliding roof, keeping the side window frames in place.  The new MINI Hatch 3-door has become so much bigger, and where MINI designers forgot that a MINI Hatch absolute must is the near non-existent overhang,  Opel remembered, as did the Fiat 500, and this gives the Adam and 500 that cuddly stance.  MINI, you have officially been overtaken as small fun charismatic city hatch by the baby Fiat and Opel.

In this group, the Opel Adam Rocks is the most-fun small hatch / semi-cabrio you can buy new.  The Fiat 500C TwinAir (OK, very cute too, with its freshly-facelifted new lights and new infotainment screen) prices are R 232 500 to R 268 400.  The only new DS3 Cabrio model costs R 349 400, while the MINI Convertible (a full cabriolet) starts at R 379 000 for the Cooper manual.  See Dad, R 287 100 is great value for the Adam Rocks.

This car is very befitting of the Wir lieben Autos (We love cars) Opel slogan.

Have you found the sharks?

An Opel fan family member asked “Have you found the sharks?”.  Included throughout the cabin, a shark outline appears in places like the open-close rubber strap that forms a front-seat cupholder.  Just for a bit of fun.

Limited edition mini-CUV

CUV?  It combines resilience and the agility of a mini-CUV (“Cross Utility Vehicle”) with the freedom of open-air driving.  Opel says the Adam Rocks is inspired by parkour sports, and is about self-expression.

Limited to 150 cars, as announced when it was launched here in November 2015… so if they’re not all gone already (or is it a lure to go to your Opel dealer?) then you’d better hurry to your nearest Opel salesperson.

#

Hashtag, tweet, selfie, WhatsApp, Instagram, Wi-Fi, googling, emoji, friend request, LOL, app, Siri, über… if you know what these are, do/use these, and have these in your regular conversational vocabulary, you are the perfect target market for the Opel Adam Rocks.
 
Opel Adam Rocks?

This package is so perfect.  Loaded with character, a great lively good-sounding engine, quite good fuel economy, some protective cladding, a bright colour, quality interior, solid feel, proper sound, cabrio(ish) roof, and fun to drive.  “Nifty!” one observer summed up.

If you can plan around the small boot space, the Adam Rocks will reward you with a smile to take away some of that examn stress.

Yes, the Opel Adam Rocks does what it says on its label – it #Rocks!