Faults:

After 4 days of ownership, the airbag light kept coming on. I took it back to the dealer where they reset the sensors. The light came on again the following day, but since then it has only come on during start up, when it is supposed to.

After about two weeks of ownership, I struggled to get the vehicle to start. When I did get it to start, it made a clunking noise from the engine bay and the engine management light came on. After about 10 seconds, the noise stopped and the light went off. I drove the car home and it was fine until the next morning when I came to start it - the same thing happened again.

It went back to the dealer where they put it onto the diagnostics, but failed to find anything wrong. Two days later the same fault, only this time when I got it started, the car cut out after 5 seconds. When I went to start it, the engine would not even turn, needless to say the car is back at the dealers as we speak.

General Comments:

Overall the car is great.

It handles well.

The 1.7 CDTI engine pulls really well compared to the W reg 1.7 DTI I owned 3 years ago.

Fuel economy is excellent, even with the air conditioning blasting every day.

The interior is comfy, although those indicator controls took some getting used to.

Looks are stunning, you would be hard pressed to find something bad to say about those.

Faults:

The windscreen wipers failed and required dealer attention. CD player skips sometimes.

General Comments:

The power and performance of this car is absolutely stunning, 170bhp and loads of torque. Even faster with the sport button on. Much more controllable than the wild VXR.

Gets a lot of admiring looks, rides very well on standard 17's. However, the low-profile tyres mean the wheels kerb far too easily.

The standard of service at the local Vauxhall dealer was not up to much, had to take car in as window wipers weren't working, took two days to trace the fault to a blown fuse, and the car came back pretty dirty.

The quality of materials used to build this car is in my opinion excellent and everything feels fairly sturdy.

Unfortunately, the downfall to this vehicle is its fuel economy. I never got above 23mpg mixed driving and in town it went as low as 14mpg. This was without particularly vigorous driving, if you drove the car hard it could near enough drop down into single figures. I have sold the car lost a lot of money and my faith in Vauxhall cars.