2010 VAUXHALL Astra 5-Door Hatch reviews

I bought the auto 1800 astra club around a month ago. It only had 4500 miles on the clock so was virtually new. My overall impression is it’s over priced and pretty unspectacular. That said it has had no major faults, but loads of stupid things that really annoy me and a few that could be dangerous in my opinion. I will definitely ditch it for one fault though and that is the ride quality. If you’re only 20 ignore this as you can sit on the ground for 12 hours at a festival and be comfortable. Over 30 however, and you’ll struggle with the rock hard foam moulded springless seat, the rock hard suspension that basically uses your spine instead, and the stupid auto gear changes that leave you having to permanently have your foot on the brake in traffic as it has selected 3rd gear at 10 mph! Drive a lot in traffic and you’ll soon curse this car. Add to this the ridiculous indicators that re-write the rule that you signal left to turn left and if you want to cancel you push it back to the middle. No, on this it goes back to the middle anyway, but then continues signalling, then if you go to manually cancel the signal it then signals right instead. Thus explaining why I’ve seen so many Vauxhall motorists do exactly this on our motorways. You cannot hear the indicators on the motorway, over the noise of even a moderately pushed engine, and if you’ve adjusted both the seat and the steering wheel to the optimum driving position you then can’t see the indicators internal lights going either as the steering wheel obscures your view of them! Bad designing or what? It’s plain stupid! Obviously someone trying to justify his job by trying to ruin something that has previously worker perfectly well on every car since the Ford Anglia came out in around 1962! The paint comes off if you brush passed it in a light jacket, the radio is Marconi’s original I think, and it’s by a mile the most uncomfortable car I’ve ever driven and I’ve owned loads (20+). This car was to replace a 90,000 miles plus, old, much critcised by the press Hyundai Elantra, but this doesn’t come close to that car in terms of driving enjoyment. I think this car couldn’t be more painful if it had a park bench in it! If you get one and you’re over 30 find a good back specialist as you may soon need one! The manual gearbox will doubtless be better, but there must be a lot more cars better out there now. There seems a joint thing going on with Chevy as you’ll see both in the same showroom with the Americans dropping the name ’Astra’ from their range. I think I can see why. I would have been very disappointed to have paid the kind of money their asking for these new.