Holden Astra’s mist opportunity
The roll-out of a new-generation Astra has become an exercise in staggered marketing. Paul Owen finally drives one on NZ roads.
It’s a foggy morning as I write this, yet the white Holden Astra RS-V parked outside possesses no fog lights despite being the top-of-the-range model.
Seems fog lights will soon go the way of the starting crank-handle that used to be the only way to light the fires of a combustion engine. Evidently the LED daytime running lights of the new RS-V are so smart that they can perform fog-light duties as well as their normal illumination tasks, so the Astra’s designers weren’t challenged by any need to add any of their usual flourishes in the lower front quarters of the car.
So, they simply made the Astra’s lower grille look like an enlarged version of the concave mouth of a ‘‘smiley face’’ button instead.
When I think of all the great foglight designs over the years, I feel a little saddened by the Astra’s keenness to discard them.
The recent Kia Proceed GT so embraced foggies that it had no less than four of them clustered on either side. It made the oncoming car look like two squadrons of UFOs were coming towards you before it burst out of the mist on the opposite side of the road.
Ford Performance Vehicles (FPV) once used fog-lights to define the look of their enhanced Falcons from the usual taxi-fodder produced by the now-mothballed Australian factory at Broadmeadows. They did this by making the lower lights look like mounted 20mm cannons, visually out-gunning the Aston DB5 of a certain fictional moving picture sensation. I suspect they’re the reason a lot of slower cars smartly pulled over and let me pass them while driving the FPV Typhoon at its debut event.
Which brings me to my point about the lack of any fog lights on the RS-V. For the mist-busting illuminators serve two purposes. They not only show drivers the way forward when the clouds come a-calling, they also help define status amongst models. A quick way to check model range dominance is to see whether the car in question is fitted with foglights or not.
I’d argue that the $38,490 1.6 RSV isn’t exactly well-served by possessing a similar frontal resemblance to an $35,490 Astra RS or even the $32,490 1.4 litre Astra R entry model when it first hoves into sight in your rear-view mirrors.
But this is a stance similar to that of King Canute. Over in Europe, the Astra has taken LED technology a step further forward, with an optional matrix headlight system called IntelliLux that does absolutely everything for the driver while accounting for changes in road traffic and weather conditions.
It’s the first trickle-down of the technology from the luxury car market to the automotive mainstream and European car buyers visiting Vauxhall and Opel showrooms have adopted it in their tens of thousands.
So, the foglight-less Astra RS-V is just the start of the compact Holden’s quest for simplified yet more effective road illumination. Expect the model to pick up the matrix LED headlights as well in the near future, giving Astra drivers better night vision via a wider beam of enlightenment that selfadjusts to the needs of oncoming drivers and shuts down the individual LEDs that have those approaching drivers in their line of fire.
Until that Unique Selling Point arrives, the RS-V is yet another well-fitted compact European hatch-back with a frugal six-speed turbo-enhanced powertrain.
It arguably won it the coveted 2016 European Car of the Year award on the strength of its lighter platform. That the Astra was able to meet its five-star crash test obligations with a 133kg-lighter body won it significant improvements in every measure of performance.
The RS-V comes with the same 147kW/300Nm engine as the previous-generation Astra GTC Coupe, and it’s a motor that shows its age via the heavy cast-iron cylinder block that it adopts in the interests of durability. Yet the performance of the 1.6 feels noticeably friskier now that there’s less mass for the ironclad engine to cart. Helping in no small way is the efficient programming of the smart six-speed automatic gearbox, which adjusts its shift protocols quickly to changes in driver mood and expectations, and always seems to select the ratio that’s perfect for the occasion.
Bending the RS-V around some hilly Hawkes Bay back roads in the Kaweka ranges gave plenty of opportunity to enjoy the effortless way the accomplished Astra travels. It’s a car that looks after both its driver and its passengers, and when my vastly experienced driving partner began to get enthusiastic about a full exploration of the car’s dynamic envelope, I could just sit back and enjoy the ride.
For the handling of the Holden is virtually fool-proof. It holds the road in a strong embrace with a throttle-adjustable chassis balance that’ll come to the rescue anytime the driver misjudges the best speed for the corner. Steering is freed from the corruption of sudden road camber changes by Holden’s intellectual property being incorporated into the programming of the electric power steering.
The Astra RS-V takes its place alongside the best cars in the compact class for 2017, and holds its head high in the company of the Mazda3, Peugeot 308 and Volkswagen Golf/Audi A3. It would further approach compact hatchback perfection had Holden remembered to fit some fog lights to it.