Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer review
by David Finlay (5 November 2010)
The estate version of the Vauxhall Astra goes on sale in the UK on November 26, which means it's following the current hatchback to market with a delay of just under a year. That not-quite-year has been an important one for Vauxhall in terms of registrations: nothing else on sale today comes close to the success of the Ford Fiesta, but according to the latest Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders figures for 2010 (which takes us to the end of October) the Astra is a strong second, with the Corsa third and the previously dominant Focus - clearly the Astra's main rival - a further place down the charts in fourth.
Sales trends are not easy to predict, but it might be worth a small wager on Vauxhall becoming stronger over the next few months. That's because the SMMT figures relate to the current Astra hatchback but the old estate, to which the new Sports Tourer is markedly superior. It looks a lot better, for a start, and it has a much more elegant interior design which owes something to that of the Insignia (by comparison, the cabin of the previous car hardly seems to have been designed at all).
Part of the brief for the styling team was to make the car seem sporty rather than merely functional, for the same reason that it was given the not particularly helpful name of Sports Tourer as opposed to "estate". So how do you go about this? First of all, according to the designers, you make the side windows as small as possible in order to make the car appear longer and lower than it actually is.
Vauxhall is quite open about the fact that this was considered a higher priority than visibility, and regular readers will already have guessed that I am at variance with the company on this one. The wraparound rear window, which again was devised to create an optical effect, looks as if it should help matters, but in fact you can't see through as much of it as a first glance would suggest because a large proportion of it is hidden by interior trim. Altogether, visibility is pretty bad, but I have to say that by current standards it's not unusually awful, and that other manufacters are doing a much worse job.
Practicality is of course a big consideration in a mainstream estate, and the Astra has a lot of that. In bald terms, the load volume including underfloor storage is 500 litres with the rear seats in place and 1550 litres with them folded down (not much different from those of the Focus or Renault Megane estates), but it's worth investigating these statistics a little more closely. First, they assume that you have made entirely the wrong decision and specified one of those frightful, useless, but fortunately optional tyre repair kits. A proper spare wheel (well, a spacesaver one, anyway) takes up an extra 15 litres, but that still leaves you with a decent amount of room and you're not going to be left stranded if a tyre is damaged beyond repair halfway across a windswept moor at midnight during werewolf season.
Second, the full 1550 (or 1535) litres is available only if you remove the rear seat squabs, which allows the seat backs to be folded flatter than would otherwise be the case. Obviously this is worth considering only if you don't intend to carry any rear passengers during that particular trip, and equally obviously you have to find somewhere to store them and then replace them afterwards.
There are several neat touches, such as FlexFold, which allows each side of the 60/40 split rear seat to be folded at the press of a button, and is either standard or optional depending on trim level. FlexOrganizer, when it becomes available early in 2011, will allow users to configure the cargo area with various nets and dividers, while the optional luggage compartment liner - rubber-coated one one side - not only protects the floor and the rear seat but also has a fold-out flap which covers the rear bumper.
On the matter of people rather than luggage, there's a decent amount of room in the back, though larger types will need the cutouts in the back of the front seats, as kneeroom would otherwise be badly restricted. The front is much roomiers, and the seats (which are very supportive and comfortable) have a quite astonishing amount of fore-and-aft adjustment. In fact, this is the first car I've tested since I-don't-know-when which I am simply unable to drive with the seat in its rearmost position. Since I'm six foot three, you can imagine that this is not something I normally expect to happen.
Another thing I wasn't expecting to happen before I drove the Sports Tourer was to find it particularly enjoyable to drive. Boy, was I in for a surprise there. Vauxhall's media launch took us into parts of north Wales along roads which were sometimes thrillingly twisty, sometimes badly surfaced, and sometimes both. Frankly, the ride and handling were remarkable, partly because of the back axle arrangement.
In times gone by, the back axle of an estate car was intended to do little other than stop the rear bumper trailing along the ground, but Vauxhall has carried over the much cleverer set-up from the hatchback. This is difficult to describe without going details about compound cranks, Watt's linkages and all that sort of thing, but trust me, it works brilliantly.
The wide choice of engines includes everything from a 99bhp 1.4-litre petrol to a 158bhp 2.0 CDTi turbo diesel. I tried the 138bhp 1.4 petrol turbo, which is really just a replacement for the old 1.8 non-turbo and not as exciting as you might think. I preferred the 123bhp 1.7 CDTi because it had better acceleration from low engine speeds, though Vauxhall reckons that the 108bhp version of the same unit will be the most popular among buyers, largely because of its 119g/km CO2 emissions and consequently low taxation. Even cheaper to run will be the 94bhp 1.3 CDTi ecoFLEX, whose CO2 rating is 109g/km, though surprisingly enough it costs only about £400 less to buy.
Manual transmission - either five- or six-speed depending on which model you've chosen - is almost the default choice. If you want, or need, an automatic, you're restricted to either the 113bhp 1.6 petrol engine or the 158bhp 2.0 diesel.
There are four trim levels, called ES, Exclusiv, SRi and SE, and they all includes ESP, six airbags, air-conditioning, daytime running lights and front electric windows. There isn't much difference between the first two (cruise control, extra storage and a fancier interior being the key extra equipment on the Exclusiv), and they both come with 16" steel wheels. The others run on 17" alloys and have the FlexFold system mentioned above; the SRi is the relatively sporty one, while the SE is the best-equipped, with automatic lights and wipers, an auto-dimming interior mirror and electric rear windows.
Unlike either Ford or Renault, Vauxhall isn't offering any version of its mainstream estate for under £16,000. Prices start at £16,575 for the 98bhp 1.4 petrol ES and extend to £24,300 for the 158bhp 2.0 CDTi automatic. Models with the 108bhp 1.7 diesel - reckoned to be the most popular engine, as mentioned before - cost between £18,665 and £21,370, depending on trim level, while the 1.3 ecoFLEX goes from £18,270 to £20,975. All these prices include VAT at 17.5%, so they will go up slightly at the start of 2011.
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