Will Astra end ‘Dad-car’ tag?
It’s possibly the most important new Holden of 2017 and it won’t go on sale until February. Paul Owen drives the new Astra hatchback and bends elbows with soap stars and celebs.
As one of Ashleigh Brewer’s 73,400 Instagram followers, my son was surprised to see a picture of his Dad pop up in one of the former Neighbours star’s posts.
He instantly recognised me as the old guy gate-crashing a group shot of young and far better-groomed Australian celebrities and social media leaders attending the recent launch of the Holden Astra in Canberra. My unlikely presence in such an image was evidently the equivalent of an ageist human photo bomb to him.
So why were the New Zealand motoring press mixing it with a bunch of well-followed kings and queens of Aussie Cool who seemed far more interested in their lunch than the car at the Astra event?
It’s all part of Holden’s transformation from ‘the Commodore company’ into a broader church of GM cars sourced from all over the world. With the new cars comes new ways of communicating with buyers as Holden seeks to shed its ‘dad-car’ image.
So, the appearance of a Grandad in a photo posted to thousands of young social media voyeurs expecting to see more of their beautiful and admittedly-gracious heroine’s lifestyle wasn’t exactly part of the publicity plan. And I also got more exposure than the car in Brewer’s posts from the event. For there wasn’t a single image of the Astra when I checked (stalked?) her Instagram account following my son’s tip-off.
Which must have been a disappointment for Holden although a member of the company’s communications team later told me that she had ‘very low expectations’ of what might result by inviting a group of young social lifestyle exhibitionists to come along.
Seems just having Holden mentioned by Brewer is enough. But here’s what Ash declined to say about the Astra to the hordes of faithful followers who view selected snippets of her young and restless life via their vanity phones:
1: It’s good, but we already knew that given that it is the current holder of the prestigious European Car of the Year title, as judged by 50 top-ranking motoring journalists in the EC. But consider some of the great new MY2016 cars that the Astra beat to that gong: Audi A4, Mazda MX-5, Jaguar’s dynamic F-Pace SUV etc. The ECOTY might have a preference for choosing practical and affordable hatchbacks over more prestigious and sporty cars, but said hatch still needs to be seriously good.
2: It’s still a Holden, rather than an Opel. Okay, so the changes that make the Astra ready for life on Antipodean roads are relatively minor, and amount to a recalibration of the car’s electric power steering to make it less responsive when the wheel is near the straight-ahead position. This accounts for the more crowned shape of Australasian roads and makes it easier to keep the Astra travelling smoothly in a straight line. The rest of the chassis is all GM Europe’s work, including the 130kg-lighter new platform of the car, and a suspension tune that majors on delivering bump compliance while holding body roll well in check. It’s a car that combines comfy ride quality with agile and well-balanced cornering characteristics.
3: There are two engines, and both are direct-injection turbopetrols. One is the iron-blocked 1.6 four from the outgoing Astra GTC, and it develops 147kW and 300Nm of driving force. The other is a new 1.4 of all-aluminium construction that generates 110kW and 60 less Issac Newtons. Make my Astra the 1.4 as the 30kg-lighter engine delivers an even-better chassis balance and prunes a litre from the per-100km fuel use figures. You also get a proper handbrake lever with the 1.4 instead of one of those pathetic push-button parking brakes. This comes in handy when failing to impress young Australian actresses with your sexagenarian skids at a car launch motorkhana.
4: You can get a third driving pedal for those who like to dance while they drive. Both gearboxes on offer possess six forward ratios and the manual is expected to have a take-up of less than 5 per cent of Astra sales in New Zealand.
5: There’s a ‘shark’ inside the cabin. Or so our hosts said before challenging us to find it (we didn’t). Otherwise it’s a fairly conventional place, with a 7 or 8-inch touch-screen dominating the centre console according to whether it’s an 1.4 Astra or a 1.6. There’s good visibility, a selfparking function, and it’s all ergonomically-correct, but nothing really excites (or offends), and a large chunk of a centre stack is a blank space where GM could have easily added an extra cubby-hole.
6: We don’t know the NZ range prices yet, although the Aussies know theirs. Across the ditch, the Astra costs a snip more than an equivalent Mazda3 or Volkswagen Golf model, a reflection of the Holden’s more complete safety equipment portfolio and the free servicing plan that comes bundled up with it over there. Holden NZ will announce prices on November 26, and they’re promising that they’ll be competitive.
7: This is the most important Holden of 2017. By the end of next year, one fifth of all Holdens sold here are expected to be Astras according to the NZ business plan. Will my 27-year-old son buy one? That’s a bit more likely now that he knows that Ms Brewer, rather than just his doddery old Dad, has already sampled it.