Vauxhall Vectra 2.2i Estate

In October 1999 I eagerly awaited the arrival of my new company car. I knew it was to be a two litre Vectra and had driven the 1.8 previously and found it comfortable and fairly swift on the motorways.

The hire vehicle which I'd been using, a Nissan Primera, had significantly failed to impress so now I was quite eager for something else.

I've never truly been a fan of the Estate car but upon seeing the Vectra I found myself appreciating the manner in which the stylists had blended the load carrying rear end into the lines of the vehicle. Six months later I still can't say that I find the car as ugly as say a Mondeo Estate.

The performance from the 2.0 16v unit is perfectly adequate for all but the most extreme manoevers. Passing a HGV in the middle lane is little problem from almost anywhere in the rev-range. I have found that the car's handling is significantly degraded without some form of loading in the back. Keeping the fuel tank topped up seems to be sufficient to sort this out though. Fuel economy on the motorways is excellent 30mpg is a baseline figure. Enthusiastic A road driving will cut into that figure quite alarmingly though.

Build quality in the main is fine. After three months a loud graunching sound starting accompanying every turn of the steering wheel this was traced to low fluid in the steering reservoir and corrected very quickly and, recently, I've found that the rubberised radio aerial snaps off if you go through an automatic car wash. These are fairly minor conerns though.

If I have one real complaint about the car its that the load area is very awkwardly shaped and is not especially big. A colleagues Renault Laguna Hatchback, in some circumstances, has swallowed more gear than my estate.

All round the car is comfortable, economical, quick-ish and no ugly duckling. If you've got to tour the country,carrying the occaisional outsized load, you could do very much worse