Topless fun with Cassandra
There’s a Vauxhall out there that’s neither fish nor fowl. It’s still available to buy new and is unjustly ignored in favour of flashier brands (as opposed to better cars). On the used side, they’re now plentiful and offer amazing value.
It’s called the Cascada and it has been (well) built in Poland for a good few years now. The trade refers to it as Cassandra. When this convertible came out, it was supposed to be the SAAB 9-3 cabriolet replacement.
The Cassandra – sorry, Cascada – is based on the GM Delta 2 platform, but it’s honestly much more Audi A4 than Astra in both size and quality. What’s more, I think it drives a whole lot better than the premium German. For that, you can thank the Lotusdesigned Hiper Strut front suspension and a Watts linkage at the back.
So if you’re hankering after a SAAB cabriolet then this should be your next car. Just pretend the Vauxhall Chicken is a Swedish Griffin. Take a look at the body and you’d swear it was engineered in Trollhätten. As well as the Saabesque door shuts, there’s a substantial cross-braced tubular chassis under an already stiff monocoque. It makes the body 50% stiffer than any SAAB or Astra droptop. (Top Tip time: there is a proper torqueing sequence to this bracing if you ever need to dismantle it.)
Why the sales pitch? Well, nobody is buying these cars, yet as I’ve demonstrated elsewhere on this page, SAABS are still in huge demand.
For the sake of reader interest, I went after a good one at a Motability sale the other week. It was a neat looking example with full service history and described/listed as brown in colour – a description which conjures up images of an MGB. In reality, ‘brown’ was actually a gold/silver finish similar to what made the Cavalier Mk3 look so great. The leather interior and canvas roof were unmarked, although I did find a slight crease in the lower nearside rear wing in front of the wheelarch. This being the Elite model, it came with everything you’d ever need. At the auctioneer’s instruction, the driver raised and lowered the hood to demonstrate its functionality.
Bidding was lacklustre, as I’d expected. However, I didn’t expect the hammer to fall at just £8350 for this orphaned design. This car had a retail cost of more than £30,000 new. Today you could have it for close to quarter of that price for the sake of one owner, 40 months and a paltry 28,000 miles.
Why am I so enthusiastic about this car? Well, back in 2015, I had the good fortune to attend a private dinner in a Michelin two-star restaurant in Monaco. My rental car was supposed to have been a Corsa, but I got given one of these instead. A week of topdown Cote d’azur fun in this model means Cassandra will always have a special place in my heart.
‘It’s more Audi A4 in size and quality’