My father once pointed out there are some cars which you never see being driven badly, almost as if their drivers didn’t want to make the car look bad. Opel is one such brand with the very fleet-friendly Astra GSe.
I’ll admit I wasn’t ‘fizzy’ about this car. I had driven the Astra SRI and was content to sing its praises.
Having a swished-up model with the promise of more athletic performance had me asking, why?
And how was I supposed to champion ‘’Fleet-ly Virtues’’ with a sportier version of what I had just driven?
Yes, the GSe falls under Opel’s mandate of low-emissions vehicles, being a 1.6-litre turbo petrol hybrid, but then, it’s a hybrid with performance at its core, isn’t that contradictory? Apparently not.
Well, first things first, the 165kW/250Nm Astra GSe is quick – bordering on Tesla quick, though this is subjective.
See, I ride motorcycles so ‘send it!’ takeoffs are as natural as breathing and the Astra GSe can, and will, take your breath away – if you want it to.
But just because one is quick off the line does not make one irresponsible, especially if one has both hands on the wheel, head checks before indicating, indicates for three seconds, head checks again and merges like a zip into traffic. And I was doing this all week with the Astra; all the time, every time.
What about speed limits?
What about them, indeed. The Astra GSe is quite capable of putting you within easy reach of the long arm of the law, but at no time does it make you want to try.
With the versatility of an eight-speed auto, it will tootle around all day at 40, 50 or 60km/h – at 30, you might as well walk – and it sits comfortably in the 90 to 110km/h range too, without relying on the adaptive cruise control.
Handling is awesome. I have recently found a third test turn in Auckland, which measures how accurate cornering is in a given vehicle.
The Astra GSe was so good, I travelled 12kms away from where I wanted to be, just to turn around so I could do it again.
There are few cars out there that encourage us to take the long way home at $3+ per litre, but the Astra does, and being a 12.4-volt battery-equipped hybrid, it’s a guilt-free pleasure.
Astra has a pure electric range of up to 61km and a petrol range of over 600km and – because it operates in hybrid mode so efficiently – you wonder what all the pure electric BEV fuss is about.
A hybrid means no range anxiety, gives you all the convenience of gas stations wherever you need them and if you don’t plug it in overnight, you still have a car that works.
But you go a heckuva lot further than if you had 91/98 on its own. Not all hybrids can claim this degree of efficiency, but the Astra GSe can.
Astra has Opel’s minimalistic cockpit with the PurePanel screens and easy-to-find-and-use switchgear – which includes buttons for the heated steering wheel and seats – positioned to keep the driver’s attention on the road, where it should be.
They say space is the final frontier, and the Astra cabin has plenty of it for five people plus a healthy stash of cargo in the 352 to 1286 litre hatch space.
Yes, there is a space-sucking juice cable in there, but you can leave that at home for emergency use only, which is really what those cables are for incidentally.
It looks a little sleeker than the regular petrol model too, still a little on the practical boxy side, but a little racier, reinforcing Opel’s performance promise. Is the Astra GSe a good car? No, it’s a great one!
