SUVs now account for more than half of new-car sales in Europe, yet Opel is going against the grain. Its next concept car, the STX Concept, is dedicated to the estate and will be unveiled next month at the Paris Motor Show.
The German manufacturer has just revealed the name of the show car, “Sports Tourer eXperimental”, or STX for short. The intention could hardly be clearer. “ST” refers to Sports Tourer, the badge Opel has long given to the estate versions of its models, such as the current Astra Sports Tourer. The “X” signals a design study rather than a future production model. Opel is not announcing a specific car, but rather its vision of what the estate of tomorrow could look like.
The figures show the scale of the challenge. According to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), SUVs accounted for 53 per cent of new-car sales in the European Union in 2024, up from 51 per cent in 2023, continuing a steady rise that began in 2015. ACEA does not publish separate figures for estates, which are spread across the traditional segments (C, D), but the trend it documents makes clear the backdrop against which Opel is standing up for this body style.
A long history of estates at Opel
Opel points to its heritage. The brand says it helped establish the estate in Europe as early as 1953 with the Olympia Rekord Caravan, a tradition carried on today by the Astra Sports Tourer and its maximum boot capacity of 1,634 litres.
“The Opel STX Concept embodies our vision of the future of an aerodynamic estate, a body style Opel helped pioneer in Europe,” said Florian Huettl, the brand’s CEO, who will present the concept in Paris on 12 October. According to Huettl, the show car previews Opel’s next-generation design language, some elements of which will find their way onto future production models. Which ones, and whether an estate will be among them, remains to be seen.
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