FIRSTDRIVE OPEL ASTRA:Opel has been developing the new Astra and PADDY COMYNtook a spin under cover of darkness
OFTEN, WHEN the mind wanders, it is fun to imagine a world without marketing people. Imagine turning on your TV to see an advertisement for sanitary towels that doesn’t feature a smiling young woman surfing, but rather doubled over with cramps, miserable and wanting nothing besides chocolate.
Fast food commercials would feature fat, spotty children and beer ads would show someone vomiting in an alley before texting someone else’s husband or wife to declare undying love.
Most of the time marketing people have their uses, but when it comes to cars they are more often a nuisance because they just say the same thing about every car. The new model isn’t better because the last one was rubbish, but because it has been “further optimised to meet the needs of our ever progressive customer base”.
So imagine being presented a car without a marketing person in sight. Not one. This appears to be one of the few benefits of being on the European Car of the Year jury. Motoring Editor Michael McAleer wears the Ireland colours with pride on most occasions but, due to a last-minute change of plan, yours truly donned the green jersey to see what Opel had planned for the new Astra.
So there was no smiling girl with an Opel umbrella at the airport. Instead we made our way to the Opel factory near Frankfurt, where we were met by John Puskar from GME design, and engineers Reinhold Enders and Thomas Kiefer. And with not a glamorous model in sight, the covers were lifted off the next Opel Astra. In the words of Van Morrison: “Why can’t it be like this all the time?”
First impressions? It’s a good-looking car. The first version of the Astra will be the five-door, and the three-door will remain on sale until probably late 2010, with GM in no hurry at all to talk about it. Instead, the new five-door sat under the glare in a brightly lit shed.
Puskar from the design team beamed like a proud father. “We have taken many of the blade graphics from the Insignia. But it isn’t the idea to do a clone of the Insignia – more of a family member. My wife and I have two little girls – they both look like each other and they both look like us, but they don’t look exactly like us or each other. Still, you know they’re part of the family.”
The car certainly looks like part of the new Opel family, which is no bad thing. The Insignia, current European Car of the Year, is selling like hot cakes in Europe and has been praised for its premium-look design, great interior and excellent driving. Many of the Insignia’s visual traits have been adapted for the smaller Astra.
“We had some goals. The Insignia was an elegant car with a lot of sporty details; we wanted the Astra to be sporty, with some elegant details,” says Puskar.
The blade design, which features in the Insignia, is in evidence just behind the front wheel arch and the car has a very dynamic stance. The car looks a little smaller and like it has less headroom, but it is actually a bit taller.
The new grille is different to the Insignia’s in that it is stretched and wider, but not as large. Indicators are integrated into the foglamps and the rear of the car looks much wider and squatter, giving this five-door a more three-door look.
Inside, the new Astra is unashamedly Insignia. It appears that much has been lifted from the larger car, including the wheel, gear shifter and much of the centre console and it works well. There is a marked improvement in the interior, with a much more upmarket feel.
The really clever stuff is under the skin. While key rivals such as the Ford Focus use a multi-link rear suspension, Opel has unveiled a new system that uses the traditional MacPherson front suspension seen in the Insignia, and, at the rear, a newly developed compound crank rear axle with a Watts link.
What this layout does, which Opel says is unique, is reduce noise and vibrations as well as allow for sharp handling. This set-up offers good packaging, better wheel camber stiffness, less camber loss due to body roll during cornering and lower suspension friction. And adding this Watts link, Opel says, enhances lateral stability.
The new Astra also gets an adaptive damping system, similar to that featured in the Insignia, but as well as a Sport setting, which sharpens the steering and throttle, the Astra gets a Tour setting, making things all soft and cosy.
We were given the opportunity to test both the current and forthcoming models on a variety of roads and from initial impressions, the new car feels much sharper and the interior makes a huge difference in terms of how you feel about it.
All 6ft 2” of me was comfortable in the back and there is actually better headroom in the new Astra than in the current Insignia. For the driver, steering feels much better and Sport mode firms the ride up nicely – plus, the dials light up red, which is a cool touch.
Opel isn’t saying a whole lot about engines just yet. We drove a 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol, but you can expect to see diesels featuring prominently, with 2-litre 130bhp and 160bhp diesels, and perhaps the ultra-low emissions 1.3-litre diesel in there too, so Band A emissions.
Chief engineer Thomas Kiefer did say they’re working on Stop/Start technology and an electric version, which will make the Astra even cleaner. It will make its production debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September before its launch in Ireland at the end of November. We will bring more news on the car in coming months.