Advantages: Practical, Comfortable, Economical, Pleasure to drive
Disadvantages: No CD player

...I bought my Astra off my Dad 3 weeks ago and so far it has proven to be well worthy of the task it was intended for. I have moved to the 98 registered "R" reg astra from a slightly bigger 99 Seat Toledo. I say bigger, it was higher and wider than the Astra but one of the reasons I wanted the estate was because I have 3 small children and a dog and we couldn't go out together in the Seat. So, the Astra. Well, I have 2 daughters who are almost 3 and a son at nearly a year old. They're all in car seats and the 3 seats fit well in the back of the car with plenty of leg room for the little monsters. My partner has the front passengers seat, loads of leg and head room (she's only little) and her opinion of the car is "it's nice, better than the silver one" (toledo). I am almost 6'2 and I have plenty of head and leg room being... Read review

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Advantages: Spacious and nice looking
Disadvantages: Quite noisy and does go through a lot of fuel

...surrounded by hills and have found the vehicle to be very un-economical. I seem to use a lot of fuel going to and from work, about a 20 min journey each way. From my own experience my fuel needle seems to drop rapidly and I find myself having to fuel up often. Maybe it's because I have to change gear quite often and if this is the case then I only recommend this car for people who commute on motorways where little gear change is required. The interior is nice and spacious, the interior was one reason I thought I liked this car. However, I now find it quite uncomfortable on the drivers seat. Vauxhall thought it a good idea to put one of those 'back rests' in, where you have a knob to turn and the 'rest' moves in or out against the small of the back. Personally I don't like it so have it in as much as possible, yet you can still feel it over... Read review

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Advantages: Drives Nice, Great Economy, Cheap Tax, Cheap Insurance
Disadvantages: Not as quick as some.

...I bought this car in November 2005, to replace a rather thirsty, but fun Ford Probe. Due mainly to the fact that I do a 40 mile round trip to work every day, which was costing over £40 per week in petrol, I decided to forget performance, and get a Diesel. I test drove several cars, Golfs, Mondeos, Citroens and the like. I had never considered an Astra, as the Cavalier I had several years ago was the most unreliable car I've ever seen. On a budget of £3500, I was looking to get the newest, best condition car available. 406's, Mondeos (newer ones) and Golfs were all either well out of my price range, or had huge miles. I spotted the Astra 1.7Dti Envoy in Autotrader, at £3495, in Silver, 81,000 miles, with Full Service History, and one owner, on a 2001 Y plate. This was the best condition car I had looked at, by a country mile... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Performance, spec, reasonable insurance
Disadvantages: Some think the looks are too conservative

...Please humour me as what I am going to do here is actually a review of the Astra 2.0 SRi 16v, but hopefully you will still find it useful. This is the model I have and Ciao don’t seem to have included it on their list of Astras so I’m sticking it under the 2.2 ok?!! Anyway it is basically the same car as the 2.2, just with an ever so slightly smaller engine. I purchased my Astra SRi about a year ago. This was from a Vauxhall dealer I found in Slough after doing a used car search on Vauxhall’s very helpful website. I had decided on the Astra as both the Golf GTi and Peugeot 206 GTi had very similar performance as the Astra but much higher insurance groups. (The Astra 2.0 SRi is Group 11). The price of £11,000 I thought was quite reasonable for a sports model that was just over a year old and only had 8,000 miles... Read review

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Advantages: efficient, utilitarian, family friendly
Disadvantages: No status symbol, not flash, not over-stated

...I've had Vauxhalls before - Chevette, Cavalier, & 2 Astra estates. They've all been 2nd hand and they've all had loads of miles on the clocks 65, 190, 165 and 185,000 miles respectively and all of them have given me very little trouble despite the mileage. So here I am with the newest one I've ever had - 84,000 miles on the clock, almost four years old and it's going like a dream, bought from a dealer that passes on ex fleet cars, the condition of the bodywork, interior etc is excellent. The fuel economy is very good - supposedly around about 50mpg. Big boot, proper seat belts in the back, Air con, elec windows in front, CD player, roomy underfoot as well as behind the drivers seat. A good solid feel to the drive, it goes well - pulls up hills nicely when full of kids and family & when you put your foot down it goes. This car is a really... Read review

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Advantages: Spacious, comfortable, well equipped and economical.
Disadvantages: Sounds like a diesel, accelerates like a diesel!

...I recently decided to change my car and started to look for something suitable. I had already decided on an estate car to cope with the dog and I wanted to swap to diesel to reduce the fuel bill; however, that's as far as I had got. Now there are loads of decent diesel estate cars out there, so whats the best way to choose one? My advice is to follow the basic steps of, listing the contenders, going to a car supermarket to test drive as many as possible and then searching for the right car. Anyway, I test drove the Renault Laguna, Ford Mondeo, MG ZTT, Honda Accord, Peugeot 307 and the Vauxhall Vectra. They all had good and bad points but I chose the Vectra as the one that suited me best. Because I like all the toys, I wanted the top of the range Elite and although they are not too common, I searched the Internet and found... Read review

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Advantages: The extra rear seats are always with you folded under the floor
Disadvantages: You have to empty the middle row to get the rear row out, no sliding doors

...Introduction ---------------- In 2003 I took the option to opt out of our company car scheme and use an allowance to purchase my own vehicle. I bought a Vauxhall Zafira Elegance 2.0 DTi from new in July 2003. This was the top of the range diesel and I added to it Vauxhall's Technical pack, Winter Pack and Climate Control. Vauxhall of course are part of the American General Motors (GM) Company and you can find the occasional GM sticker on it. Other parts of the world know them as Opel. The Zafira is generally classed as a mini MPV, it's essentially based on the Astra (old model now) floorplan and is a bit like an Astra estate that's been stretched upwards. There are a lot of mini MPVs on the market now but the Zafira is (certainly was) one of the few to fit a third row of seats into this space. I'm sorry but a vehicle... Read review

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Advantages: Space age looks (New Model 2004) Great Engine. Quality interior. Equipment
Disadvantages: Driving position. Ride & handling.

...aerodynamic styling gave it a very distinctive look, the chassis was now however getting dated, GM spent all their dollars on the styling and what had previously been a taught, entertaining car to drive was now getting decidedly flabby. One of the worst cars I ever recall driving was a Vauxhall Belmont CD. An Astra with a boot and a wonderfully torquey 2.0 litre 8 valve petrol engine. Trouble is it drove like a partially set blancmange. I owned three Astra's of this era, all with that same 2.0 fuel injected engine, all three also had a convertible roof, the first one, a GTE was a great car, the second two (the first of which only lasted six weeks - another story for another day!) were truly terrible cars. The Astra has suffered some appallingly bad build quality problems in its time! This new one however looks better and better. No, apart... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Good value, very comfortable, nice extras.
Disadvantages: A little noisier than I would otherwise have liked...

...with the GPS, though, is that there seems to be no 'shortest' route calculator. You can have 'Quickest' or 'Prefer Motorway', but no 'Shortest'. Seems like a silly thing to miss, but there you go. Another really well thought out feature are the automation features. Automatically dimming rear view mirror, windscreen wipers that detect how much rain there is on the windscreen, and swish faster or slower accordingly. Very clever, and useful. The Astra is comfortable as ever on those long (8 hours, in my case) journeys, but cramp does set in on the right foot eventually, because the 1.7 DTI has no cruise control. Nor does it have an on-board trip computer. Two things that they only fit on the 2.2 DTI and above, it seems. So that's three features that seem as if they should be there, but aren't. As for driving around: Acceleration... Read review

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Advantages: improved looks and better engine
Disadvantages: seat comfort and akward handbrake operation.

...Having driven an old shape Vectra 2.0 Di for 3 years as a company car I was given the choice between a Rover 45 or Vectra 2.0 DTi for my replacement car in March 2001. The power is much improved in the DTi over the old Di except for standing starts where it seems to be more sluggish until the turbo kicks in. The ABS is useful (as I found out on the M4 a couple of weeks ago). It gives you more confidence under braking and saves on underpants. Load capacity is superb even without dropping the rear seats. Fuel consumption is good (I average approx. 45 mpg with a lot of motorway driving). My main criticisms of the car are the seat comfort and the lack of a proper left foot rest. I'm sure i am not the only person who has got out of a vectra after a 200 mile journey looking like Quasimodo. ( Vauxhall have been criticised... Read review

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