***Update. It turns out that this car was a late registered Mk5, not the new Mk6 Astra***
Some of you may remember that I used to do ridiculous mileage in my own car for work. I've since changed jobs and brought a lot of business with me. I'm now working for a proper company rather than a bunch of cowboys.
Of course with a proper company comes proper bureaucracy, it takes a couple of months to get such things as an email address, a mobile phone, and access to the website that lets me pick my company car. In the meantime I need to do a site visit and thus a hire car is ordered.
This particular trip is to Hull, once voted the most miserable place to live in Britain so it seems strangely appropriate that my hire car turned out to be a Vauxhall.
It arrived with just 24 miles on the clock so any problems can't be attributed to the abuse of hundreds of previous drivers who didn't give a crap about the car. I went in with zero expectations (it being a Vauxhall) and little knowledge of the car itself. I didn't even know if it was diesel or petrol.
I start it up to the unmistakable grumble and clatter of an oil burner, have a quick look around for the controls and am actually impressed by one thing. It has separate buttons for rear and front foglights, something the Germans (or at least VAG) have consistently failed to do despite the fact that rears are meant to be used at <100M visibility and fronts are supposed to be used when visibility isn't much beyond the end of your bonnet. +1 for vauxhall, then I realise it has Vectra-style indicator stalks so -100 there.
I may as well get all the generic complaints about modern cars out of the way. Yes it has Vectra indicator stalks. The engine is the wrong way around and connected to the wrong wheels and the dash is about 2 foot deep so I hope you don't want to use a windscreen mounted satnav. Rear visibility is terrible, as is rear/side visiblity. Nearly all cars made this century have these issues so I'm not going to count them against the Vauxhall, except for the indicator stalks.
Interior is fine. Fox et. al. will complain about crappy plastics, but it's functional and it works. I'd prefer a jap-style headlight controller, ie one on the stalk but whatever. Personal preference and all that.
I start driving and again I'm pleasantly surprised. For a diesel the engine is quite nippy and revs reasonably well. You could almost think you were driving a mediocre petrol engine.... almost.
My first trip is a trip into the office this is a mixture of dual carriage way and then an area known locally as "the lanes" at best they are wide enough for two cars many sections are barely one car wide and most of the potholes here are in it for the long term. This is a good test of the car's suspension and handling.
I found the suspension and handling to be lacking. In particular they were lacking in handling, and suspension. Vauxhall have achieved what I previously thought was impossible. They have managed to make a car that is as wallowy as my old Volvo 940, handling that is completely unpredictable yet at the same time every single bump, pothole and bit of uneven road surface is transmitted directly to the seat as if you were driving an Audi with the sports suspension. My Volvo, while wallowy is nice and comfortable and smooths out our crappy roads. My Nissan is somewhat harsher but makes up for it with good handling and predictable levels of grip. The Vauxhall manages neither of these, combining the worst aspects of both cars.
On the motorway network things don't get much better. You can still feel every bump, bearings on bridges being particularly unpleasant, the amount of body roll involved in a simple lane change is quite frankly ridiculous, worse than my 1993 Volvo and my 1993 Nissan, the latter of which is still on it's original suspension and bushes.
As I reach the end of the M62, another disappointment is noticed. I've done 250 miles and this diesel engine has managed to consume nearly the entire tank of fuel. The onboard computer reports that I've achieved 27.3 mpg which is up on the 27.1 mpg that was on there when the car was delivered. I pull into a shell and am astonished to find that inside the fuel flap it says "Unleaded petrol only". I guess that explains why it almost felt like a mediocre petrol engine. It's because it is in fact almost a mediocre petrol engine.
Pressing on and it finds another way to annoy me. The little display thing that tells you the time and your MPG etc puts up a little pop up window, and at the bottom of this window is an OK button. I press the OK button and nothing happens. I try a few more times and conclude that the touchscreen is broken. This is annoying as I can't make this dialogue box go away. Later I find an OK button much further down, on the radio to get rid of it. That's the only control relating to the display, no arrow keys or joystick or iDrive or anything of the sort. Just a single OK button in a completely non-obvious place.
The last thing worth mentioning is the seats. I have back issues from a crash 6 years ago and the last time I drove a Vauxhall was in 2007 (a Zafira in this case) I ended up having to go to A&E upon reaching my destination as my back was in agony and it wasn't getting better once I stopped driving. I waited until 7AM to be seen, then was prescribed a 100 pack of Tramadol which meant I then slept through the entire day and missed the job I was supposed to go to.
I am pleased to report that such a visit will not be the case this time, however this is nothing to do with Vauxhall improving their seats and purely to do with the fact that once I got rid of the Zafira I no longer needed to take Tramadol, therefore I still have 80 left, they are still in date and I have brought them with me. The seats are identical to the ones in the 2007 Zafira, ie they are terrible.
In summary I wouldn't buy this car, at least not until it reached banger status and was on sale for £200, even then there would have to be nothing else on sale for a similar price before I would consider it. Despite going into this car with zero expectations I have somehow managed to come out disappointed.
I don't know why they call this car "Elite", "Mostly Harmless" would be more appropriate, or perhaps "Dangerous"
Some of you may remember that I used to do ridiculous mileage in my own car for work. I've since changed jobs and brought a lot of business with me. I'm now working for a proper company rather than a bunch of cowboys.
Of course with a proper company comes proper bureaucracy, it takes a couple of months to get such things as an email address, a mobile phone, and access to the website that lets me pick my company car. In the meantime I need to do a site visit and thus a hire car is ordered.
This particular trip is to Hull, once voted the most miserable place to live in Britain so it seems strangely appropriate that my hire car turned out to be a Vauxhall.
It arrived with just 24 miles on the clock so any problems can't be attributed to the abuse of hundreds of previous drivers who didn't give a crap about the car. I went in with zero expectations (it being a Vauxhall) and little knowledge of the car itself. I didn't even know if it was diesel or petrol.
I start it up to the unmistakable grumble and clatter of an oil burner, have a quick look around for the controls and am actually impressed by one thing. It has separate buttons for rear and front foglights, something the Germans (or at least VAG) have consistently failed to do despite the fact that rears are meant to be used at <100M visibility and fronts are supposed to be used when visibility isn't much beyond the end of your bonnet. +1 for vauxhall, then I realise it has Vectra-style indicator stalks so -100 there.
I may as well get all the generic complaints about modern cars out of the way. Yes it has Vectra indicator stalks. The engine is the wrong way around and connected to the wrong wheels and the dash is about 2 foot deep so I hope you don't want to use a windscreen mounted satnav. Rear visibility is terrible, as is rear/side visiblity. Nearly all cars made this century have these issues so I'm not going to count them against the Vauxhall, except for the indicator stalks.
Interior is fine. Fox et. al. will complain about crappy plastics, but it's functional and it works. I'd prefer a jap-style headlight controller, ie one on the stalk but whatever. Personal preference and all that.
I start driving and again I'm pleasantly surprised. For a diesel the engine is quite nippy and revs reasonably well. You could almost think you were driving a mediocre petrol engine.... almost.
My first trip is a trip into the office this is a mixture of dual carriage way and then an area known locally as "the lanes" at best they are wide enough for two cars many sections are barely one car wide and most of the potholes here are in it for the long term. This is a good test of the car's suspension and handling.
I found the suspension and handling to be lacking. In particular they were lacking in handling, and suspension. Vauxhall have achieved what I previously thought was impossible. They have managed to make a car that is as wallowy as my old Volvo 940, handling that is completely unpredictable yet at the same time every single bump, pothole and bit of uneven road surface is transmitted directly to the seat as if you were driving an Audi with the sports suspension. My Volvo, while wallowy is nice and comfortable and smooths out our crappy roads. My Nissan is somewhat harsher but makes up for it with good handling and predictable levels of grip. The Vauxhall manages neither of these, combining the worst aspects of both cars.
On the motorway network things don't get much better. You can still feel every bump, bearings on bridges being particularly unpleasant, the amount of body roll involved in a simple lane change is quite frankly ridiculous, worse than my 1993 Volvo and my 1993 Nissan, the latter of which is still on it's original suspension and bushes.
As I reach the end of the M62, another disappointment is noticed. I've done 250 miles and this diesel engine has managed to consume nearly the entire tank of fuel. The onboard computer reports that I've achieved 27.3 mpg which is up on the 27.1 mpg that was on there when the car was delivered. I pull into a shell and am astonished to find that inside the fuel flap it says "Unleaded petrol only". I guess that explains why it almost felt like a mediocre petrol engine. It's because it is in fact almost a mediocre petrol engine.
Pressing on and it finds another way to annoy me. The little display thing that tells you the time and your MPG etc puts up a little pop up window, and at the bottom of this window is an OK button. I press the OK button and nothing happens. I try a few more times and conclude that the touchscreen is broken. This is annoying as I can't make this dialogue box go away. Later I find an OK button much further down, on the radio to get rid of it. That's the only control relating to the display, no arrow keys or joystick or iDrive or anything of the sort. Just a single OK button in a completely non-obvious place.
The last thing worth mentioning is the seats. I have back issues from a crash 6 years ago and the last time I drove a Vauxhall was in 2007 (a Zafira in this case) I ended up having to go to A&E upon reaching my destination as my back was in agony and it wasn't getting better once I stopped driving. I waited until 7AM to be seen, then was prescribed a 100 pack of Tramadol which meant I then slept through the entire day and missed the job I was supposed to go to.
I am pleased to report that such a visit will not be the case this time, however this is nothing to do with Vauxhall improving their seats and purely to do with the fact that once I got rid of the Zafira I no longer needed to take Tramadol, therefore I still have 80 left, they are still in date and I have brought them with me. The seats are identical to the ones in the 2007 Zafira, ie they are terrible.
In summary I wouldn't buy this car, at least not until it reached banger status and was on sale for £200, even then there would have to be nothing else on sale for a similar price before I would consider it. Despite going into this car with zero expectations I have somehow managed to come out disappointed.
I don't know why they call this car "Elite", "Mostly Harmless" would be more appropriate, or perhaps "Dangerous"
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