Bitter – Sweetening the Deal

For a rather longer time than seems necessary, it was an unwritten rule of motoring that beyond a certain price point – somewhere around the six figure mark – the quality and reliability of your new car was inversely proportional to its cost. Things may have improved lately, but back in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s or ’90s, when you bought a Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati or Aston Martin, it was a key ingredient of the experience that you were never quite sure when it would start or which organ you would need to part-exchange when the service bill arrived. Not so with Bitter.

Of course, in this sea of sputtering, coughing, failing-to-proceed incompetence, there was Porsche. Buy a Porsche and you got reliability baked in. You could confidently go anywhere in your 911, even if in the ’80s this may have involved quite a lot of hedges. But Porsche was an aberration. And you were limited to a 911, 924 or 928, none of which were really intended for more than two people.

Step forward Erich Bitter, a man whose personal experience of terrible Italian supercars – he ran an Intermeccanica dealership for a while – so enraged him that he decided to do something about it. He saw that if he could combine reliable mechanicals with the style exuded by those exotics, he must be onto a winner. Erich was certainly the man to do it. He began his competitive career on two wheels with bicycles before transferring to four wheeled racers, delivering wins for German minnow NSU. He was also something of an entrepreneur, establishing Rallye-Bitter in 1962 to sell tuning kits and rally accessories.

His association with the marque that would literally underpin his ambitions began in 1968. Impressed by his NSU-equipped drives, Opel invited him to campaign its new Rekord race car. Initially known as The Taxi but latterly – and more evocatively – nicknamed the Schwarze Witwe (Black Widow), in the hands of committed Bitter this 150bhp rocket ship ran rings around Porsches in higher class groupings. The top bods at Opel’s Russelheim took note.

The next piece of the Bitter jigsaw occurred in 1969 when Erich became the German importer for Abarth and then Intermeccanica. This experience taught him two things: firstly, that some people would pay a lot of money for a car and, secondly, that some other people – quite often Italians it would seem – would charge the first group of people a lot of money for cars that broke down a lot. Bitter’s eureka moment was to build a car that would service the people who would pay a lot of money for a car, with a car that didn’t break down a lot.

He was not alone in his thinking. Over at his new chums Opel they’d been musing along similar lines. They went one step further and developed the ‘Coupe Diplomat’ proposal. With input from Pietro Frua, this led to a pretty Maserati-esque coupe based on Opel Diplomat running gear. The CD was displayed at the 1969 Frankfurt Auto Show. The response from customers and internal bigwigs – including US automotive gerent Bob Lutz – was positive. When the hard economics of building a very low-volume GT proved to be the main sticking point to actually building it, Opel suggested Bitter might want to pick up the project.

Of course he did. Spotting the chance to bring his Ferrari-beater to fruition, he tweaked the design and gave the job of building it to Bauer. Just 395 CDs were built, far less than anticipated. But it had given Bitter the car-building bug. For his next project he would be more fully involved from the start.

Bitter began working on the CD’s replacement in 1977. It took two years and about 8 million Deutsche Marks to bring his vision to fruition. Following the same template as the CD – mass-produced running gear and mechanicals with a bespoke body – it was designed from the ground up by Erich. He had clearly been influenced by the Ferrari 365/GT4 – no bad thing – but the SC was narrower and nimbler. Like the Fezza, the SC was a proper 2+2 GT, mixing a luxury cabin with a decent boot.

Cars were initially built by small Italian outfit OCRA, but when quality proved dismal, production quickly moved to Turin-based coachbuilder Maggiora. Final assembly was by Bitter. The running gear was everyday, but since it came from the 3-litre straight six shared with the Senator, that was no bad thing. Most were fitted with the Senator’s sludgy three speed auto, but a few manuals were built.

Reviewers were generally positive about this unusual addition to the realms of luxurious, rarified GTs. There was some confusion – was it a pretty Senator, a Ferrari 400 clone or a proper Maranello rival? The main criticism surrounded the lack of power from the initial 180bhp motor. But the SC was beautifully put together, clearly well-engineered and certainly rare.

It is typical of the restless Erich that having developed the SC coupe, he didn’t stop there. A convertible arrived in 1981 and then in 1984 a crisp four-door saloon. Performance criticisms were addressed in 1982 with the Mantzel-tuned 3.9-litre engine that upped power over the crucial 200bhp threshold. There was also a 4WD version of the coupe using the Ferguson system pioneered on the Jensen FF.

Despite the improvements and new models, sales were never high. This was, in part, a consequence of the construction process. Initially. Bitter only had the capacity to complete one car per week. From 1982 this rose to two cars per week. In early 1983 Erich struck a deal with Steyr Daimler Puch which pushed production to a heady three or four cars per week. But by this time money was getting tight and the end of the SC was looming. Only around 450 cars were built before financial problems brought the whole enterprise crashing down.

Following the demise of the SC, the irrepressible Bitter refused to be beaten. He turned his attention to a series of show cars, which depending on your perspective were either increasingly unusual, highly creative or simply desperate. Latterly things have been more conventional, with Opel buyers able to specify a range of ‘Bitter’ cosmetic accessories for their Mokkas, Grandlands, Insignias, Astras and Corsas. While it takes the company back to its ‘Rallye-Bitter’ roots, it feels like a very watered down version of Erich’s vision.

Today the reputation of the Bitter SC is surprisingly mixed. For some, it is an unusual motoring cul de sac, albeit one a little short on the provenance usually reserved for low volume GT vanity projects. For others, it is what Erich envisaged – a stylish GT with the reassuring running gear of a multinational conglomerate. One that was very well built too, which is certainly unusual in this sector.

This dual character means you won’t pay much for a decent Bitter. Under £20,000 will bag you one, which is about what you’ll pay for the GT Opel actually built itself – the Monza. We know which we’d rather have and you can find your own right here should you wish.

Erich Bitter, who sadly died in 2023, is one of the many driven individuals who have pushed the motoring world forward. Unlike certain contemporary equivalents, he was a man of principle and high standards. The firm’s drift into modern day motoring cosmetics may not be to everyone’s taste, but then we’ll always have the CD and SC.