Whole lot of goin the new Astra eco
Vauxhall Astra EcoFlex, 1.6 CDTi Sports Tourer
I’m currently writing a book about age and how getting craggily old is now becoming more and more of a last-minute, post-80 home-straight thing, as opposed to a long, drawn-out war of attrition between us and our baggy old skin and bones.
Speaking to a pal, I recalled an expression of time that really focused my attention on the job in hand. It wasn’t about how many years we may have left but rather how many summers we have left. A year is a big old boatful of highs and lows, but a summer? That’s a far more fragile and finite thing to contemplate.
‘Ah, I know what you mean,’ he enthused. ‘I have the same thing with books. I only read one a year during my annual holiday. This means I’ve only about another 20 reads in me. You won’t believe how much more stressful that prospect makes my yearly selection. I sometimes wake up howling in the middle of the night.’
Similarly, then, I wondered, what if my time left on Earth was quantified in Vauxhall/Opel reviews?
You may remember my last encounter was with the Insignia VXR SuperSport, which turned out to be a miserable experience for all concerned. I will never forget that gearbox as long as I live, and I will always be tempted to stop anyone driving an Insignia so I can simply ask them, ‘Why?’
That said, this hasn’t put Opel off sending me more product to potentially lambast, an admirable doggedness that I can only respect them for. Unlike Maserati, whose response to my review of their new swollen Quattroporte was to inform me I was clearly too unperceptive to interpret their repositioning of the famous marque, and therefore there’d be no more Mazzas coming my way any time soon. Perhaps they could send me the pram they threw their toys out of to review instead.
Or perhaps they could get over themselves, move on and come up with something half-decent – like the new Opel Astra EcoFlex.
A bloke called Mark Adams designed this car. He’s the one who had to contend with our prejudice over the Astra. It’s not exactly a name that conjures up the image of Car Of The Year is it? Or even Car Of The Next Five Minutes.
Well, form a queue, fleet buyers, your archangel may have just descended from the heavens and landed on a forecourt near you. I mean, I’m not saying this car is a catwalk queen or anything like that – far from it, with her squinty, suspiciously shady headlights and far too full a bonnet. However, she does sport the odd line worth hitching her dress up to show off – the general gist being, the further towards her bottom you go, the better she gets.
From side on she’s a solid seven out of 10, with her tapering roof and Lucio Fontanainspired razor cuts, but round fully on her behind and you might even sense a bit of salivating taking place.
It’s a similar story on the inside, in as much as she doesn’t exactly knock it out of the park in any department but she’s okay.
The generally welljudged instrument layout, for example, is spiked by a magnificently confusing central puzzle of fiddly, nondescript control buttons. These reminded me of my first Binatone transistor radio, the one that I used to listen to under the covers at night. It was so imprecise, finding the right radio station could often take till it was time for me to get up again for school.
Another minus on the inside is the infotainment display, which looks like it is touchscreen but isn’t, and is so bright and defiantly undimmable I could still see its silhouette burned into my vision hours later. Another note for the suggestions box is an auto-heat control setting, conspicuous by its absence but something I was seduced into expecting by the overall improvement of the rest of the driver/passenger environment.
The one-touch-up-and-down electric windows came as a pleasant surprise, as did the massive rear cargo area accessed by the easy-to-operate tailgate, which lifts gracefully before closing with a very definite ‘ker-clunk’. None of the above, however, is really what this Astra is here to shout about – that’s more to do with its ‘revolutionary’ 1.6-litre CDTi engine, developed seemingly all over the world before being built in Europe.
We are talking about a frenzy of aluminium that’s been passionately fashioned in order to produce a super-clean, super-light diesel power unit. And if that doesn’t render your gob suitably smacked, there are countless pages of other impressive innovations to read about in the press pack: the glass-fibre-reinforced plastic cam cover for example, or the dual-mass fly-wheel and mechanical crankshaft isolator, all designed to reduce radiated noise and torsional vibrations. Which they do, rather well.
Thanks to this seriously huge effort on the engineering front, she is an almost effortless car to drive, her steering is a joy, her gearbox like a knife through butter; acceleration is surprisingly responsive, the
ride is bump and jolt-free and there is hardly any discernible road or engine noise whatsoever: she is a noticeably much quieter car, bearing in mind that diesel DNA of hers.
Opel are truly bullish about this car, claiming they have set the benchmark for all other manufacturers when it comes to a new way to build an engine. I’m not qualified to comment on that, but I can confirm that they have successfully produced a motor that feels purposeful and safe (Euro NCAP scores are off the charts) while also managing to be both economical and assured.
All in all, very un-Opel like, I suppose. Or maybe not any more. Maybe this is the way forward, a new beginning, Opel/Vauxhall’s carnival period to coincide with them spending a fortune sponsoring the England football team ahead of the Brazil World Cup. Perhaps this was their plan all along, like an elite athlete, timing their performance to peak at the perfect moment. Cue the advertising spend...
All Opel has to do now is change the car’s name: Astra brings too much baggage of under-expectation with it. How about the Rio, then, to commemorate its birth year?
And then, having done that, maybe Opel’s CEO could stop by the team’s hotel on his way to the finals and whisper his recipe for unexpected success into the shell-like of the manager.