In essence, they are the standard caliper, but with a thicker bit of 'filler' in the middle, over the standard. Don't forget the vented rear discs were an addition to the range only on later models. So the decision to make an adapted caliper over standard (hence why the pads are the same) was clearly taken.
I'm still dubious as to a few thousand (at the very most) cars having calipers that are unique to them.
I know exaclty where you're coming from Andy, it doesn't seem to match up, in terms of cost v volumes etc. However, all I can summise/theorise is that the rear caliper is different,
and the same, at the same time. When whoever it was (marketing) said 'we'd like to boast vented rear discs, that'd sell on the higher performance models', the discs were easy enough to make up, literally add a few mm thickness. You can literally imagine an engineers being given the task, where they have a caliper plonked on their desk, see the modular construction, split it in two, and simply add a thicker bit in the middle. Not dissimilar to the. Spec up longer pins, and slightly different springs, and you've actually made a whole 'new' larger caliper, whilst retaining probably 7/10 of the individual components of the original caliper. Outer & inner caliper casting, pads, hoses, bleed nipple, seals, boots, pistons, bolts are all the same. So from that way round, if there's no 'off the shelf' solution, that makes pretty good financial sense.
Also Vx/Opel spent some £180million facelifting the Omega, which was not much below what a mainstream Manufacturer could develop a
whole new car for, back then. Now we know where a few quid of that went!
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Topic: Rear brake pad pin confusion (Read 5761 times)