Faults:

Fantastic car. Had oil pressure issues, and has had a cabin leak in the front, which still eludes me; I was told she would needed to be stripped and thoroughly checked.

General Comments:

Fantastic car, besides the oil pressure problem, serviced her once, and had no problems since. Light on fuel. Will miss her when I get a later model... Have grown quite attached to the old girl.

The car handles well, with my Pirelli Pzero 17 inch alloys, hugs the road like a go cart. Slower to pick up speed in the lower gears; 4th gear terrible, 5th gear is awesome.

Faults:

Head gasket blew at 95000 miles.

Engine gave up the ghost at 110,000 miles.

Revs were quite stuttery after the head blew the first time.

General Comments:

Apart from the Astra's terrible head gasket problems, I loved this car. I owned a 3dr and it was very comfortable inside the car, very quiet road noise, excellent road holding on major roads and a great 5th gear too. It's neither quick or slow from 1st to 3rd gear, but 4th and 5th are geared nicely.

Handling was OK on the standard 13" tyres, but if you are willing to take a small hit on performance, this car handles amazingly well on 15" wheels.

Economy wasn't too bad, long distance journeys especially good. However on the flip side, the car uses a little bit too much petrol starting the car, so short journeys are a bit wasteful.

The bodywork is also quite strong, it's not easily dented. I think the car can look nice enough too if well maintained.

But, the car is brought down by their head gaskets. My mother used to own an Astra too, but the head blew around the 90k mile mark and now the engine has finally died at the 140k miles mark. Better than mine, but still disappointing.

Faults:

None.

General Comments:

After years of driving old bombs, I gradually moved on to newer cars and this was the first brand new car I ever bought.

It was a Champion II special edition, with all heaps of goodies. It came with leather steering wheel, leather gear stick, dual air bags, ABS brakes, fog lights, mags, electric sun roof, metallic paint, engine immobiliser, roof railings and whatnot.

I also opted for a wagon rather than the hatch back (I wouldn't even consider the pott-ugly sedan), simply because I like wagons.

The performance of the car was not bad, considering the size of the engine, but for a wagon, the 1.8 litre variant would have been a better choice. The very easy going and precise 5-speed gear-box made good use of the 100 horse powers the engine produced though. The top speed of nominal 180km/h was adequate, but could have been a bit higher.

The seats were very comfortable and even in fast corners, kept you in place.

Apart from sheduled services and a major repair after I kissed the back end of a car in front of me, the car had never seen the inside of a workshop.

The fuel consumption was excellent and even though I used to flog the poor thing, it hardly ever used more than 8.5 litres of petrol.

The only downsides of the car were the fairly high purchase price of then DEM 35,000 and the pretty poor price I got when I eventually sold it. Unfortunately, in late 1997, the new "B"-model Astra had hit the market and the prices for the "A"-model, went down quite a bit. So after a tad over two years and 75,000km, I got a lousy DEM 16,000 for it. That's less than half of the new price and was pretty disappointing.

All in all, a very good car for people who don't require a humongous amount of power.

Faults:

Until now nothing has gone wrong.

General Comments:

I like the design of the car which is still better than the newest models. Also despite the automatic transmission, the fuel consumption of the car has one of the lowest in its category.

Faults:

Nothing.

General Comments:

Great car.

Very comfy, but the seats are a little short if you're a tall guy like me (6'2").

Handles very well, got good brakes, ABS brakes, double airbags, sun-roof, and it all works brilliantly.

Uses about 0.6 - 0.7L/10km, and with the extra luggage space you get in a stationwagon, the Astra is a great car.