WIKING 035204 – Bedford Flatbed lorry

When the last German Opel Blitz rolled off the production line in 1975, a four-decade-long era of light-duty lorries came to an end. The task of closing the gap in the transporter portfolio now fell on the Bedford Blitz. Even WIKING followed suit after parent company General Motors had decided to assign more clear-cut responsibilities to all of its European subsidiary brands – including Opel. The British Bedford plant was put in charge of utility vehicles, while Opel in Germany was supposed to fully focus on making passenger vehicles. While the model name was intended to tie in with Opel’s German tradition, the less-than-German look of the Bedford Blitz did not achieve the desired success. It simply did not have what it took to topple the undisputed top dogs in the transporter business of the seventies – the VW “Bulli” and the Ford Transit.