After my car needed work for an MOT and I had no access to get home, my brother loaned me his car and thought I may aswell Blog about my thoughts of driving these cars and the good points and down points to driving these vehicles.
So here’s my Astra VXR review, coming from a Vauxhall hater who drives a VW. Don’t get me wrong, I love all the old Vauxhalls, but like the newer cars, Vauxhall have fell short and built their cars like shit.
Anyway, first the good points to the vehicle. Driving position is very flexible and comfortable. The seats have plenty of adjustment options with adjustmemt in both back and seat length. I was quite surprised by this personally. Everytime I’ve gotten in a Vauxhall my feat where always really cramped, and the steering wheel was always at my knees. Even with the seat adjustments at their furthest distances. So this was a nice pleasant surprise. All while you’re driving your supported by some generously comfy bucket seats. They even seat the lardiest of arses like myself
Whilst driving the Vauxhall I found the handling to be pleasant and very firm. When I steered the car it gave very positive feedback, there’s also a really nice driving position and it was never uncomfortable throughout the entire jouney and I always felt in control of the car.
It was a bit weird steering the car because I wasn’t used to the dimensions of the vehicle. I’m always paranoid about nudging walls and stuff with cars like that but like all cars you get used to it I suppose
Performance wise the car feels weird. Although this is partly down to the brothers car having a faulty MAP sensor on the turbo. It’s with-holding boost then delivering it all in one go. This made driving the car hard because there was nothing on clutch bite then WOOOPMH! All at once. Needless to say I think I’ll buy him one to repair the vehicle. Ofcourse I did have to test out the performance. Cough. Only in short bursts up to the speed limit though. Surprisingly with my style of driving I actually used very very little fuel in the car so it was good. Performance wise it feels refined, actually felt like I was going slow until I realised I was already at 50mph on the roads in a very short space of time.
Anyway, bad points. As typical fashion, this being a sports car it’s not designed for tall fuckers like myself. The car is streamlined and me being 6ft3 I found my head banging the roof alot. Also one thing which REALLY pissed me off was the damn A pillar position. Everytime I kept turning my head to check my right hand side I kept headbutting the pillar. Was bloody annoying. I’m sure this is contributed to the fact the car is stupidly narrow on the inside. It’s tiny inside compared to my wee golf. The wee golf is huge haha.
I also didn’t like the mirrors on the car, both interior and exterior. The exterior ones even when adjusted didn’t give me fully visibility of the sides in the vehicle. They’re far too narrow in height imo although that’s just me.
As for the last point of note I don’t like the gearbox, it felt really weird in terms of throw to get the gears and the gearbox has an abnormally short throw distance. At times I almost felt like it wasn’t in gear. Again I’d get used to it
Overall. I wouldn’t own the car, but coming from a dedicated VW/Mitsubishi fanboy the driving of the vehicle in terms of performance and handling has impressed me alot. i wouldn’t go as far as saying I’d own one, but I’d definately use one for a couple of days in desperation
OH – last but not least. I need to pay for the scratch on the car. I told the bro as I felt guilty. Cough….shame…cough
