USED Vauxhall Astra Hatchback (04 - 12)

My car

i bought my astra from a lease company at 3yrs old,with 98,000mls miles showing in oct 07.since that time i have covered 4000 mls completely hassle free,great comfortable economical car and the only niggle is clutch judder when cold which I beleive is a problem across the vauxhall range.Build quality and feel is excellent and I would recommendone to anyone.

My car

I have the 2008 model of this car with the Easytronic gearbox. I went for this gearbox as I wanted the ability to swap to automatic mode in traffic sometimes but still have the manual control at others.

On the whole, I am fairly pleased with the way it works but it certainly isn't as smooth as a fully automatic box and it doesn't have steering wheel paddle shift. I love the sport button though which makes it into 4 different cars: Manual, Manual-Sport, Automatic and Automatic-Sport.

Performance is a little weak overall but nothing to worry about unless fully loaded. Get it over 2500 revs and it accelerates hard in the first 4 gears.

As for the rest of the car, I think it is really well thought through and has virtually no annoyances for me. The actual looks are a bit bulbous and, dare I say it, ugly on the 5-door but some of the other Astra models are really nice in my opinion.

The faults I would mention are very minor - the wing mirrors stick out too far, the optional auto-lights switch on and off at embarrassing times (under bridges / trees etc) which is a bit stupid, and the sport mode doesn't cancel when you put it in reverse which is a bit crazy!

On the whole, a very good, although fairly 'standard' spec family car. Not in any way an outstanding piece of design but pretty much faultless, well built and designed.

My car

Spent 3 years with this car - not too sorry to see it go because the MPG was very poor and the diesel noise in the cabin was much worse than Renaults I have driven. I will miss the sporty handling and handsome look of the car but leg room in the back was very poor and the boot not great considering how big the car is. On the plus side the car was totally reliable and had plenty of toys on it. Overall conclusion - enjoyable drive but not great for families.

My car

This is an amazing car, the paperwork for this car says that it is 1.3 16V, common rail, turbo diesel.This seems on paper as if it would be slow. But you're wrong. There is an amazing amount of power and mid range torque from this highly developed engine. We've just come from France and it has done 75mpg! The car it replaced was a Golf V 2.0SDI which in comparison is a sluggish tractor compared to this Astra. This diesel may not be the fastest diesel on the road, but you can only do 70mph (legally!), but this car does 40-60 or 50-70mph very fast and that is what we all do alot of. The build quality is good too, much better than the Golf V it has replaced. The suspension far is better than the Golf V too. The handling is good, the ride quality is good and the road tax is going down to £90 next year, what more could you ask for? If you want a small family diesel car, then this is a good contender. Only one moan, that is the lack of pocket storage inside, but other than that is brilliant. I do rate it. It puts a smile on your face when you drive it, excellent job to Vauxhall.