50 shades of grey pallor Awakening the sleeper
That’s Ryan’s complexion, wishing he had a white one Astra RS kicked out of bed; runs to the hills
TWO months in to Mercedes-amg E43 ‘ownership’ and something terrible happened. I saw another one on the road – a white one – and it looked so good it made me sad.
White is the colour this car should be. It lets the blacked out Night Package trim and AMG styling details work so much harder, in ways Understated Grey just can’t.
Of course, this car is only on loan. I’m sure the regret would be worse had I spent $160,000 of my own hard-earned, waited (potentially months) for it to turn up, and then realised I’d made a mistake. Which got me thinking – if I did spec my ideal E43, what would I do differently?
Not a lot is overlooked as standard. I even smugly discovered when leaving the shops with both arms straining under the weight of a week’s groceries that it has a hands-free boot release. I stood uneasily on one foot at the back of the car, risked humiliation and waved the other in the air under the bumper. Lo and behold, it worked first try. The boot lid opened and I dropped my bags inside triumphantly without ever touching the key. A nice surprise, even from a car at this price.
The only single-option equipment not fitted to the loaded-as-standard E43 is a TV tuner you can’t watch while driving, a wireless charging pad that wouldn’t work with my phone, and climate control for the back seat area I’ll never sit in. So, no harm no foul.
What I am missing is the Performance Ergonomic Package ($4400) that adds AMG sports seats, a microfibre-trimmed steering wheel and red stitching. Sadly, there’s no crackly exhaust in the Performance pack like there is for other 43 models. Without it the E43 is too quiet when you want fireworks. There’s a decent soundtrack there, which deserves to be more vocal. Still, the AMG interior garnishes would transform my interior, which is too similar to the less expensive E400 for my liking. I’m not alone in thinking this: Benz Australia says almost every E43 bought in Oz has the pack fitted. Except mine, it seems.
There’s still chatter in the Wheels office about whether or not the E43’s torquey bi-turbo engine is good enough for an AMG badge. With the E63 now here the gap between them is blatantly obvious, but the way the V6 effortlessly tugboats up hills at 1500rpm in 8th has won me over, even if its concerning thirst for fuel hasn’t.
So that’s my perfect E43; Diamond White with the Performance Ergonomic Package and carbonfibre dashboard inserts instead of matte timber to fully satisfy my champagne taste. But the beer budget could be a problem.
FAMILIARITY breeds contempt, so they say, but month three with the Astra RS proves that there are exceptions to that cynical maxim. The primary reason why I’ve yet to grow weary of the Astra is the fact that it is an astonishingly well-sorted drive. Scratch that: it’s just plain fun.
And how could it not be? With 147kw and a mega-stout 300Nm, the Astra’s 1.6-litre donk has performance metrics that, had it rolled into showrooms a decade ago, would have put it ahead of a Golf GTI for torque and equal to the German hot hatch for power.
Meld that considerable muscle with suspension that manages to be both supple and dynamic, and the result is a car with a much feistier nature than its demure exterior suggests.
There are some downsides, though. All of that torque is a blessing and a curse: it’s wonderful for overtaking, highway onramps and restoring honour in rolling-start drag races, but it also generates ample axle tramp off the line in slippy conditions. There’s more than a smidge of torque-steer tug under hard acceleration too.
Does it spoil the experience? Is the Astra’s 1.6 – gasp – too powerful? Last month’s city schlep had me wondering whether the chassis could contain all of that energy on a winding mountain road, so it was time to head beyond Melbourne’s city limits to discover whether comfort-biased spring rates are as good at dispatching corners as they are at ironing out speed bumps.
Pointing the Astra’s plasti-chromed nose toward the Yarra Valley, it takes two hours before twisty tarmac appears through the windscreen. At the first corner, it’s apparent the engineers tasked with honing the Astra’s suspension are keen drivers.
Even with a relatively unsophisticated torsion-beam rear, it absorbs big bumps with aplomb yet happily tilts into corners in a fashion that recalls hot hatches of yore. The steering is almost perfectly weighted for this kind of driving too, and feels natural and tactile for an electrically assisted rack.
Yep, torque steer is ever-present when you’re thumping the right pedal, but it’s not strong enough to wrench the wheel from your hands and, if anything, adds a little zest to the Astra’s driver involvement.
A bigger issue is traction. Apply the full dose of torque and the inside front tyre struggles to maintain purchase when accelerating out of a corner, the traction control not proving clever enough to apply a dab of brake on the spinning wheel. A limited-slip differential would help, or at the very least a more sophisticated tractioncontrol calibration.
But dynamically speaking, these are the only sizeable blots on the Astra’s ledger. Don’t let its librarian looks deceive you – the Astra RS can thrill on the right road.
IT WAS Al Pacino’s character Tony D’amato, in the classic gridiron flick Any Given Sunday, who told his hapless Miami Sharks how “life is just a game of inches.”
He was referring to the footy field, in a spiel that’s regarded as one of the most rousing sporting pep-talks ever filmed, but I recently found myself mouthing his immortal lines as I grunted and gasped, trying to find just one more inch in our Q7’s densely-filled luggage bay.
Pacino’s growling Coach D’amato may have believed “the inches we need are everywhere around us,” but even with the Q7’s third row folded to liberate no less than 770 litres, I was struggling to find them.
Shouldering the electronic tailgate shut, I prayed it wouldn’t burst back open in protest, and willed that the locksmiths of Ingolstadt were up to the challenge of restraining this lot over a three-hour road trip. One slip here and the road north would look like a drunken Pro Hart had been let loose on it with a cannon, a carton of baked beans and the contents of a Vinnies bin. Again.
Fortunately, the latches held and, with the detachable mesh cargo net snicked in place behind the second row, the kids (or what I could see of them beneath the doonas and pillows), appeared comfy.
Motoring along to the muffled strains of ‘Kumbaya’ from the general vicinity of the back seat, I was reminded again of the quiet competence of the Q7’s suspension tune; supple but disciplined, the Audi’s ride quality and steering precision didn’t suffer much, if at all, from the added burden of four humans and their extensive accoutrements.
It helps that our Q7 boasts the optional adaptive air suspension and continuously variable electronic damping ($4690) that self-levels to ensure the body sits nice and flat even when loaded.
The air suspension also enables a choice of several ride-height modes, selected via the Audi’s MMI controller, encompassing lift, offroad, comfort, auto and dynamic.
Switching between dynamic and lift when stationary is a bit of a party trick as the car gently raises or lowers in stages. From the outside, there’s a good hand-width’s difference between the two beneath the wheelarch, but out on the road we preferred leaving it in auto, as dynamic tends to make the ride and the transmission response just a little too edgy.
When it came time to unpack, the Q7’s loading mode, accessed via a switch in the luggage bay, drops ride height a handy 45mm from standard.
By my reckoning that’s just shy of two inches, which is about the extra space I needed when it came time to pack it all back in again two days later.
Yep, Coach D’amato was right: life really is a game of inches.