Faults:

Had a missfire and subsequent loss in power at approx. 58K. This was fixed.

Lumpy tick-over at approx. 61400. This has been a major problem which resulted in the replacement of HT leads and coil.

When this work was being done it was noticed that the engine bay wiring harness had perished. Apparently this is a common fault on all German manufactured cars that are not GCC specked. It gets very hot out here in the summer 50C is not unusual. As this is a Japanese specked car, we could not source a wiring harness locally through the GM dealer and had to have one made up.

When that was fitted, I had to have the ECU reprogrammed, as the techie told me that the coil was only receiving one pulse, so the engine was only firing on 2 cylinders, not good for acceleration.

It now appears that I might have a problem with the timing. The tick-over is fine, but pulling away the acceleration is very poor (flat) feels like it is a 4 cylinder.

My biggest problem here is getting spares. As this is a Japanese specked car, the local agent does not stock and is not interested in stocking spares or even trying to fix or service the car. I have to rely on the Mr. fix-its that we have in abundance in this country.

General Comments:

The car itself, when everything is working, is great to drive. We have excellent roads in the Emirates, most are dual carriageway 4 lane highways and as a cruiser, this car is great.

It handles quite well, but I can't really test it on these roads.

I find that adjustment for the seats is quite adequate with all the minor controls easily to hand.

I don't want to get rid of it, but I might have to because of the spares situation.

Faults:

Very many expensive faults have appeared during my 4 years with the Vectra.

The engine blew up at 114 000 kilometers.

Now it has its 3rd engine. High oil consumption and engine breakdown relatively often happens to the 1.4 and 1.6 engines produced from the mid nineties and up to around 2002 (at least), according to surveys I have found.

AC-system has been leaky, and was expensive to fix; close to 1000 pounds / 2000 USD.

Displays fail. Lamps blow up too often. Airbag sensors often fail.

Cambelt has to be replaced relatively often.

The car has been terribly expensive, and I tell all my friends what a catastrophe the car has been.

General Comments:

It has very low quality, and is very expensive to fix. According to the Norwegian newspaper VG "Verdens Gang", both the Opel Vectra and Opel Omega produced between 1995 and 2002 happened to be on a list of the 12 worst used cars one could buy.

The newspaper (http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=209997) concluded; "Opel Vectra (oktober 1995 - juni 2002) "gir eierne massevis av problemer og feil", heter det ifølge testen."

This means: "Opel Vectra (October 1995 - June 2002) gives the owners loads of problems and faults, according to the test.

Consumer's Association was behind the test.