NEW 2022 Vauxhall Astra Review: Is It Good ENOUGH?

[Music] the vauxhall astra has been around for 40 years and seven generations now and in that time it's always sold by the bucket load but it's never been the most exciting of cars has it vauxhall is probably well aware of this which is why they've decided to go big with a brand new astra one that has a fresh new design and cutting-edge features and here it is the new mark 8 voxel astra we've already given you a full walk around of the car on this channel but today we actually get to drive the thing we're out in sunny lisbon in portugal where we're gonna look at everything about this car the looks the technology the design the way it drives especially in comparison to its arch rival the volkswagen golf so let's figure out whether this car is actually worth buying starting with the looks [Music] to me this car is a lot more distinctive than before and the main reason for that is the new face it's got vauxhall's visor face that's this big black strap that runs the entire width of the car and bleeds into the left and right headlights this car has the black pack which you get on everything except for the entry level astra that means the badges at the front and at the rear are blacked out and that's useful because it just hides away these sensors look you've got your radar down there for your adaptive cruise control and your ultrasonic sensors are all tucked away in a way that you can't really see them credit to vauxhall for thinking about that so many manufacturers just slap sensors on the front of their cars and don't really think about how it integrates with the rest of the design now the headlights these look good and they're also very very clever not only do they have this very distinctive led pattern just there these are also the optional led matrix headlights which means that they do some very clever things more on that in just a second along the side the car is actually four millimeters longer than before which isn't an awful lot is it it's nice to see that the astra isn't getting too big with every new generation the side itself is quite simple and pure but it does have these big bulging wheel arches at the front just to give it a little bit more of a muscular presence as for the wheels well they start from 16 inches and go up to 18s which are these bad boys they look alright but they do have these little weird plastic bits along the outside i dare say they'd look better without that stuff although it might be quite useful for aerodynamics do like the roof though totally black black a pillar black b pillar and a sharks fin c pillar the whole thing actually looks like it's floating that's quite cool it's got two refueling ports this one on the left-hand side is for your type 2 electric charger because it's a plug-in hybrid and the one on the right is for your unleaded now the back probably my favorite angle on this car to be honest love these super thin rear lights they look really cool you've also got a high level brake light which looks like the rain light on a formula one car and again because you've got the black pack you've got black badges the astra is double spaced that looks quite cool and the griffin badge doubles up as a boot handle nice the boot itself isn't the biggest this is the plug-in hybrid version which has 548 litres of storage for the seats up and 1268 with the seats down but there's also a huge bag for the charger eating up space and very little underfloor storage as the battery takes up quite a bit of room the petrol model is a bit more spacious so if that's important to you that might be the model to go for as for the rear passenger compartment the new astra has a wheelbase that's 13 millimeters longer than before but don't expect tons of leg or headroom my head was about an inch from the ceiling i'm 5.11 and legroom isn't huge either for taller passengers but there's a nice little armrest with cup holders usbs and even the option of heated seats for passengers in the back decent i just wish it had a little bit more space back there for the interior they've placed a lot of emphasis on perceived quality in other words most of the things you look at or touch are going to be of quite a high standard i do like all this squidgy stuff on the dashboard you've got two different types of texture just above it there on the dash as well even got some squishy material just above the glove box but then you start hunting around and you do find some materials which are not the best shall we say so down here on the center console scratchy plastic scratchy plastic on the doors scratchy plastic down there on the glove box and also they've gone for piano black on the center console this car has only done a few hundred miles so far it's a brand new car and this is already scratched it's got lots of these little hairline scratches that make it look a bit rubbish there are some positive things though for example the steering wheel looks very cool despite the addition of piano black i do love how they've kind of mimicked the visor at the front of the car on this steering wheel and also this lower spoke at the bottom looks a bit like the aerial that you get on the top of the car i also love this infotainment system this is called the pure panel there's also a version with bigger screens called the pure panel pro but basically you've got two displays one for all your driver stuff just in front of you and a second display for all of your infotainment it looks quite cool at first but then you start to kind of fool around with it and it looks a bit weird for example these animations right if you swipe left it does a weird animation and then does nothing because you're at the end of the menu swipe right pointless animation once again it's quite bright again it's just it's unnecessary it doesn't need to do that but i've got to give vauxhall some credit because unlike some of their rivals volkswagen i'm looking at you they haven't gotten rid of physical buttons you've got an actual physical volume knob up here and it's a good one it feels good you've also got a home button to take you immediately to the start of your menu system you've got your heated steering controls up here you've got your heated seats yep heated seats it's got a massaging seats function as well and a lot of it can be accessed at one single touch right here through physical buttons so credit to vauxhall for that in terms of practicality you've got two cup holders adjustable size you've got a little space down here for your key essential binacle here for storing your phones if you like not very big but it's a decent size speaking of phones you've got wireless charging down here and that will fit even the biggest of phablets plus you've also got this little secret compartment for hiding your sunglasses or other illicit items that you might want to stockpile away oh it's also got as is the norm these days a voice assistant function so even though it's got vauxhall badging i have to say hey opal set the temperature to 27 degrees hello it did it sweet [Music] what's it like on the road well the first thing i noticed is that it's really comfortable these seats are great they're endorsed by a german organization that campaigns for better back health called agr and they've given these seats their stamp of approval and i think i gave it my stamp of approval as well because very supportive very comfortable and it's even got a bit of lumbar support in there good adjustability so it's easy to see where you are where the road is on the whole the seating position top-notch in my opinion i think the ride is every bit as good as you get in a volkswagen golf possibly even better so if you've got a dodgy back or you just really really value a soft quality ride then the astra is probably the car for you in terms of engines there are 1.2 liter petrols with 110 or 130 horsepower with a more powerful car having either a 6-speed manual or 8-speed auto a 1.5 liter diesel is available too for some strange reason and vauxhall will make an all-electric astra next year but until then the only electrification to be had is the plug-in hybrid this plug-in hybrid version uses a 1.6 liter turbocharged petrol engine which makes 150 horsepower with an electric motor that makes 110 horsepower but for some reason the most they ever make together is 180 horsepower instead of the full 260. so it's not going to light your pants on fire but it's still got quite a lot of torque 360 newton meters so it'll do north of 62 in 7.6 seconds and there's plenty of grunt in there for overtaking it never feels slow let's put it that way as for the handling well the first time you throw it into a corner you realize very quickly that it's got quite a lot of body roll right here's a right-hander and it just tilts over on its side especially towards the front end and it's quite startling at first but actually once it settles down it feels quite composed in the corner so after that initial shock you realize there's plenty of grip in there and the body control is actually quite decent i wouldn't say it's a driver's car per se but it doesn't embarrass itself in the bends this car uses an eight-speed automatic gearbox which is a bit of a weird one because it doesn't really feel like it's doing much with these paddles sometimes when you pull the paddle to shift down it doesn't feel like it wants to downshift immediately but on the up shift it's surprisingly responsive it's not a car that you're really gonna enjoy changing gears in though let's put it that way voxels say the p-heav will deliver up to 256 miles per gallon they also say it'll go 37 miles on electric power alone thanks to a 12.4 kilowatt hour battery pack and on paper that makes it quite appealing having an electric only mode makes quite a lot of sense in this car in fact i'll knock it into ev mode right now on the sensor console i can go from sports to hybrid to electric and look now i'm running completely on batteries and that's a great option for people who live in the uk for example where i think the average journey is about 20 miles a day and this can more than cope with that with the batteries alone the problem arises when the batteries run out and you've got to charge the car if you don't have a charger at home i think this is going to be too annoying for you because as standard it comes with a three kilowatt charger which takes about three and a half hours to charge the battery and i can't imagine anyone is going to sit around at a public charger for three and a half hours charging their plug-in hybrid there is a seven kilowatt charging option which drops the charge time down to two hours but again i just can't see anyone logically sitting around for two or three hours topping up their plug-in hybrid when all they got to do is keep driving on petrol power in a weird way a fully electric car makes way more sense than this because full electric cars have much more range which means you don't have to charge them every single day maybe once or twice a week and when the battery power runs out on this plug-in hybrid you're effectively carrying around a heavy battery and heavy motor for no real return in my hands with a full battery the car managed 83 miles per gallon when driven sensibly but only 20 miles per gallon if you're less careful with a flat battery that's a big difference so keep in mind you will have to charge the battery almost every day to get decent economy so it's either good or bad speaking of which here are five things to love and five things to hate about the new astra let's start with a love [Music] here's a cool one they actually asked a musician to compose some of the noises that the astra makes including the indicators imagine being a musician like you meet this person and you go oh what music do you make and they go none just the indicator noises for the new astra tune the new astra has a 360 degree parking camera system so you can always see what's going on behind you along the side and even at the front so you'll never ever accidentally run into anyone doing exercises in the street for no reason the astra has adaptive matrix led headlights which has 168 individual beams that can fire out into the road light up the road ahead without dazzling or blinding other road users and that's the first time this tech has been seen in a car of this class here's one for all my old-school astra heads the eighth generation astra has fins on the rear section which pay homage to the original astra that's right giving up to the old generation salute the car has an e-save mode which basically saves 20 kilometers of range in the battery which you can deploy whenever you enter a city center or a town or drive past a school so you don't pollute everyone when you arrive and now for the hate the sunroof is not very big it only goes halfway along the top of the car so people in the back don't benefit from that lovely vitamin d shame the visibility around the back of the car is not amazing you've got really thick c-pillars and a really small rear glass and especially when you've got your two headrests up you can barely see anything out the back the new astro has the worst indicators in the world in my opinion look how tiny that is you can barely see it are you supposed to see that in a brightly lit summer's day that i'm surprised they got away with that borderline illegal the new astra has really loud seats not in a good way it's got heated and cooled seats but if you turn on the seat cooling listen to how loud the fans are inside it sounds like a jet pack plus it's got massaging seats but they are the worst massaging seats you'll ever find check this out right i'll turn on the driver massaging seats and turn off the seat cooling it actually feels like someone's just doing that in your back like a child kicking you in the back of the seat and then there's this color i mean what were they thinking looks like radioactive vomit on the whole i really like the new 8th generation astra i think it's a quality car i love the way it rides it's super smooth i love the refinement the technology is very good the equipment levels are quite frankly exceptional it's not perfect there are a few annoying bits as i've already pointed out but if you're looking for a family hatchback that does pretty much everything really well then the new asher should definitely be towards the top of your list [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh

Channel: AutoTrader

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Keywords: new astra, new 2022 astra, 2022 astra, new astra reivew, 2022 astra review, astra review, mk8 astra, 8th gen astra, new vauxhall astra, vauxhall astra, vauxhall astra review, new astra interior, new astra seats, astra back seats, astra boot, astra plug-in hybrid, astra price, astra seats, astra massaging seats, astra heated seats, plug in hybrid astra, astra vs golf, opel astra, new Opel astra, Opel astra review, astra carwow, autotrader uk, Rory reid

Id: wlxFF3HZmeE

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 17 2022