Back in the mid-80s, working a summer as a car jockey at a local Chevy dealership, we were bid by our bosses to deliver a new Bitter SC to a customer. As we remember, it was a tight, luxurious coupe that looked strikingly like a Ferrari 400i, with a supple leather interior that reminded us of what the inside of a gentleman's club might look like (as if we'd ever seen such a place). The sticker price at the time was around $50,000, and we'd never been behind the wheel of anything more expensive than a Chrysler Fifth Avenue. We nearly ate the keys with joy.
It was powered by a torquey, 210hp 3.9 litre Opel-sourced inline V6 six, and we took the long way 'round, via a quick stop by the Burger King drive-thru. The owner, bless his heart, was a Wall Street type who slapped a buck in our hand and pointed toward the nearest bus stop.
Now after a decade's absence, Bitter is back, with a new version, the Bitter CDII, introduced in Geneva last year and shown in Frankfurt this year. It's based (like the Pontiac GTO) on GM's Australian Holden Monero, powered by a 5.7-liter LS1 V8 tuned to produce 404hp. We're not as taken with the design as we were by the SC, but then again, we hardly ever eat at Burger King anymore.
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Frankfurt Preview: Opel Antara Concept, New Saturn Vue? [internal]