Faults:

- Alternator dies once a year.

- Had some major services, but a while ago now.

We've had some errors on the car through the years, but judging from some of the stories I've heard about people buying a new car and it dies kilometers later, the money we spent on her is negligible.

She is surprisingly cheap to fix and maintain. A fact I recently reminded myself off when I ended up on the business end of a Camry. I would say the biggest failure for, at least my Kadett, is the driver...

General Comments:

- Styling, to my eye, still looks contemporary.

- Small, agile little runabout.

- Surprisingly economical.

- Surprisingly nippy.

- Relatively cheap to maintain.

- Drives like a go-kart: Really fast steering wheel response (slim, hard tyres).

- Perfect car to get going on your driving career!

I started commuting to and from University with this car in 2004. She has been in the family since 1991 when my dad bought her second-hand. So, I was under the impression that she will give us a lot of trouble.

She did not: This car is a little soldier! She allowed me to spend my diminutive wages on student stuff, not fixing a car all the time...

And from 2008, I've been using her to commute another 80Km's per day to and from work: She just keeps going!

I have had the thought before that the fallibility built into all modern products, was skipped on the Kadetts, and as a result, it is probably the nicest car you will ever own.

Faults:

Power windows broke down. Now fixed.

An iron tube from the cooling engine system blew up the day after I bought the car.

Repaired cheap and with no any other damage.

General Comments:

The reason why I bought this car was because I was tired of the lack of space inside the Corsa.

So, I spotted my silver 4-door saloon, and didn't hesitate.

Now I recomend it to everyone. The car is comfortable, spacious inside - I'm 1,90m - it has a very large boot and I can still fold the back seats and has plenty of equipment: power windows, central locking, sunroof and tinted windows.

In terms of performance, it's quite surprising for and old 1,3 engine. It's 75hp work very well, allowing me to drive in the highway at 140km/h with no problem at all.

Actually, it's quite faster than some newer cars.

When it comes to reliability, what can I say? This is my third mid-80's Opel and none of them ever let me down.

Fuel consumption was also a pleasant surprise, achieving easily 6.5 - 7 litres per 100km.

In conclusion, it's a car I recommend to everyone on a budget.

Faults:

I only got this car last week. The car idle very low. I can't drive in 5th gear in town, than the engine wants to die on me. Can anybody tell me if that has to be like that?

Can't drive at night when the lights is switched on, then you have ref the car all the time.

The heater also doesn't want to work.I've replaced all the fuses.

General Comments:

Big inside can carry big load of luggage. Very good looking car.

Faults:

Needed to replace exhaust pipe, when it broke down.

Cabin ventilator stopped working.

A lot of rust in wheel casings and borders of doors. Also the bottom of the car was in bad condition.

Motor needed too much oil, it escaped through upper insulating strip.

Automatic choke worked occasionally.

General Comments:

The car was my first. It was most important that it worked, it was a car with big freight space.

It used very small amount of gas, after the fuel-air blend was tuned to use lower amount of fuel.

When driving the car, it feels sluggish, because the transmission is fine-tuned for low consumption in highway driving, the performance suffers significantly in city driving.

Interior was very ascetic, and it wasn't the most comfortable car to drive, although the steering was very sharp. But the creaks, squeak and low quality of manufacturing everywhere annoyed me.

The best part of the car was the cheapness of owning it, parts were cheap, technology of the car was old-fashioned (which was also its downside) and it used only 5 liters fuel for 100 km.