Something VXR for the weekend?
Discussion
Yep, it's as it comes from the factory.
Feels quick enough but looking at the speedo it seems to gain speed at about the same rate as the S2000 up to about 80, perhaps a little less so thereafter. I'd imagine the S2 has better aerodynamics.
I'd imagine a few extra hp could be liberated with the mods you've mentioned.
Feels quick enough but looking at the speedo it seems to gain speed at about the same rate as the S2000 up to about 80, perhaps a little less so thereafter. I'd imagine the S2 has better aerodynamics.
I'd imagine a few extra hp could be liberated with the mods you've mentioned.
I'm not due a change of company car for ages anyway, but you have to take advantage of freebies as and when you can 
Corsa wideboy razzmachine next weekend.
Had the 2.8 V6T a couple of times in the past too, once in the Vectra (VXR) and once in the Saab (Aero auto)
Corsa wideboy razzmachine next weekend.
Had the 2.8 V6T a couple of times in the past too, once in the Vectra (VXR) and once in the Saab (Aero auto)
Edited by texasjohn on Saturday 7th February 23:33
About 30 on the motorway, maybe just over.
About 22-25 around town I would guess.
But I have been booting it a bit.
It has a 'sport' button which seems to add a few hp when pressed. It is also 'keyless go' and has a stop-start button.
The one I had a couple of years ago (56 plate IIRC) didnt have keyless go and I dont think it had a sport button.
About 22-25 around town I would guess.
But I have been booting it a bit.
It has a 'sport' button which seems to add a few hp when pressed. It is also 'keyless go' and has a stop-start button.
The one I had a couple of years ago (56 plate IIRC) didnt have keyless go and I dont think it had a sport button.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Yep, I can't drive the Astra VXR in sport mode. It makes the rubbish throttle even more of an on-off switch. You can't easily modulate the power at all. I've driven a couple of standard VXRs before as well as Thorney Motorsports Stage God-Knows-What version with, er, lambo doors.Crap throttle aside I think they're great fun, nimble around the track and tbh the torque steer never bothered me as much as it did Clarkson. Just a gentle bit of tugging to the left.
I'm sure the standard car would kill my old VX220 (NA) in a straight line.
Anyhow OP, look forward to your thoughts
Thanks for the clarification re the sport button.
Note: I've typed away and come back to the top here to say that I realised that I have made a lot of comparisons to my 1 series so apologies for that, it is not the best benchmark. It's shame I don't have an ST or something more appropriate to compare it with but I have the Corsa lined up this weekend and that might make a better comparison for next Tuesday's installment
It's a rapid little beast and looks great in black, although it is a difficult colour to keep clean and I would not have black myself after a few months with a Fabia VRS in black, clean on a Sunday, dirty by the Tuesday!
I've always been fond of the hot hatch styling and those wheels (even if the ride can jar as a result). I quite like the styling features such as the VXR display when the nav screen wakes up although the 'piano black' plastic is a little plastic-y! The rest of the interior is nice and solid however, some of the materials feel better quality than my dad's old SLK200 (latest shape, it was an 08 plate) which had unacceptably hard and grainy centre console sides.
The seats are comfy once you find that seating position which is right for you. I had a 55 plate Clio Trophy back along and I hated the Recaros and driving position of that car, just couldn't get on with it at all. I ended up selling the car three weeks after buying and I lost a couple of hundred quid (could have been worse considering I purchased it from a main dealer too), anyway I digress. Back to the Astra...
I really enjoyed my time with it, aside from one or two minor niggles. One of them is probably particular to the car I had rather than the model as a whole; the steering wheel buttons and horn only seemed to work intermittently, this did seem to coincide with when the car was cold (the cabin I mean, not the engine) but it wasn't really a good advertisement for GM. Of course, when the driver turned up at work today at 3pm to pick it up the horn and 'wheel buttons all worked fine and our security guy at reception probably wondered what the hell I was playing at beeping the horn during the handback...sods law!
Build quality is better than a number of GM cars I have had in the past, but the centre console does buzz and vibrate a little around the air vents. This really is a minor point, it started, I tapped it, it stopped. It could be sorted very easily I am sure. That said, it is a very stiff car and a softly sprung version like the DESIGN model we have as pool cars probably gets an easier life when it comes to trim not resonating. I've not driven any of our pool cars as I have a 118d from work as my daily driver.
The stereo system really isn't up to much (although 100 times better than my S2000) especially in comparison to the LOGIC7 system in the 1 series daily driver of mine. Bass sounded akin to a soft mallet being hit against a cardboard box with tinny treble, but we are comparing the (CD70?) navigation HU and stock Vauxhall speakers with a £855 BMW upgrade and I dare say that the basic BMW business HU is worse than the stock .
On a slightly different note (no pun intended), my lowly 175hp 118d is going to feel a bit, well, s
t tomorrow morning in comparison to the rush of power and torque the VXR can deliver once the vanes getting spinning; The car has a lot of power and of course this weather was not really the best to experience it in but it is a bit of a giggle spinning up the wheels in 3rd and even 4th in the slush, where safe to do so.
I had one in the summer a couple of years ago and I recall it was probably a bit too much for a FWD even in the dry but as Dizzee has highlighted it does feel a bit flat right at the top end, perhaps it needs to breathe better, and it certainly could do with a better map, even a tuning box might suffice for the company car driver that has to hand back a stock vehicle at some point (like me).
Would I pay £220 a month income tax for it? Probably not
Would I buy a three year old version for my next car and take the cash option? Probably, but there is a whole world of options out there to choose from, one being a 545i that someone on here has just picked up for 13k (three or four years old).
It doesn't give you the feedback that my Trophy or current S2000 offers but I certainly wouldnt try it on with a VXR in my Honda once rolling as I could easily end up watching a trapezoidal exhaust if I were to miss a change or drop out of VTEC. Off the line a RWD will always have the advantage over a FWD with this amount of torque, but once you get going, no chance. Aerodynamics will come into play further up the scale of magnitudes but even so, a couple of points Cd does not make up a couple of car lengths...further, a lot of these cars will be mapped or even just tuning boxed for an easy 30 or 40 hp extra and even quicker still. It is very rapid and I can't believe that many cars will have much of a chance, especially the types of cars that tend to try it on with you (other hot hatches).
I've not driven an ST, nor a Renault 225/230, so I can't compare with the obvious competitors but I test drove a 56 plate A3 Q 2.0T last year and that was very linear and boring. In fact, after a bad experience with MG's Metro Turbo (bloody money pit and I was only a poor A level student at the time, named driver policy back when you could get away with it) I have shyed away from tubbies ever since.
I recall the Astra Bertone coupe 2.0T being quick (my abuse of Vauxhall fleet test drives has been systematic and repeated on occasion since 2001 or so) and good fun, but the VXR is a leap forward.
Hats off to GM for producing a car that appears like a run of the mill hatch with big wheels to 90% of other users (more so with the SRi pack hatchback CTDIs being easily mistaken for it), but is, in fact, as mad as a box of frogs.
Note: I've typed away and come back to the top here to say that I realised that I have made a lot of comparisons to my 1 series so apologies for that, it is not the best benchmark. It's shame I don't have an ST or something more appropriate to compare it with but I have the Corsa lined up this weekend and that might make a better comparison for next Tuesday's installment
It's a rapid little beast and looks great in black, although it is a difficult colour to keep clean and I would not have black myself after a few months with a Fabia VRS in black, clean on a Sunday, dirty by the Tuesday!
I've always been fond of the hot hatch styling and those wheels (even if the ride can jar as a result). I quite like the styling features such as the VXR display when the nav screen wakes up although the 'piano black' plastic is a little plastic-y! The rest of the interior is nice and solid however, some of the materials feel better quality than my dad's old SLK200 (latest shape, it was an 08 plate) which had unacceptably hard and grainy centre console sides.
The seats are comfy once you find that seating position which is right for you. I had a 55 plate Clio Trophy back along and I hated the Recaros and driving position of that car, just couldn't get on with it at all. I ended up selling the car three weeks after buying and I lost a couple of hundred quid (could have been worse considering I purchased it from a main dealer too), anyway I digress. Back to the Astra...
I really enjoyed my time with it, aside from one or two minor niggles. One of them is probably particular to the car I had rather than the model as a whole; the steering wheel buttons and horn only seemed to work intermittently, this did seem to coincide with when the car was cold (the cabin I mean, not the engine) but it wasn't really a good advertisement for GM. Of course, when the driver turned up at work today at 3pm to pick it up the horn and 'wheel buttons all worked fine and our security guy at reception probably wondered what the hell I was playing at beeping the horn during the handback...sods law!
Build quality is better than a number of GM cars I have had in the past, but the centre console does buzz and vibrate a little around the air vents. This really is a minor point, it started, I tapped it, it stopped. It could be sorted very easily I am sure. That said, it is a very stiff car and a softly sprung version like the DESIGN model we have as pool cars probably gets an easier life when it comes to trim not resonating. I've not driven any of our pool cars as I have a 118d from work as my daily driver.
The stereo system really isn't up to much (although 100 times better than my S2000) especially in comparison to the LOGIC7 system in the 1 series daily driver of mine. Bass sounded akin to a soft mallet being hit against a cardboard box with tinny treble, but we are comparing the (CD70?) navigation HU and stock Vauxhall speakers with a £855 BMW upgrade and I dare say that the basic BMW business HU is worse than the stock .
On a slightly different note (no pun intended), my lowly 175hp 118d is going to feel a bit, well, s
t tomorrow morning in comparison to the rush of power and torque the VXR can deliver once the vanes getting spinning; The car has a lot of power and of course this weather was not really the best to experience it in but it is a bit of a giggle spinning up the wheels in 3rd and even 4th in the slush, where safe to do so. I had one in the summer a couple of years ago and I recall it was probably a bit too much for a FWD even in the dry but as Dizzee has highlighted it does feel a bit flat right at the top end, perhaps it needs to breathe better, and it certainly could do with a better map, even a tuning box might suffice for the company car driver that has to hand back a stock vehicle at some point (like me).
Would I pay £220 a month income tax for it? Probably not
Would I buy a three year old version for my next car and take the cash option? Probably, but there is a whole world of options out there to choose from, one being a 545i that someone on here has just picked up for 13k (three or four years old).
It doesn't give you the feedback that my Trophy or current S2000 offers but I certainly wouldnt try it on with a VXR in my Honda once rolling as I could easily end up watching a trapezoidal exhaust if I were to miss a change or drop out of VTEC. Off the line a RWD will always have the advantage over a FWD with this amount of torque, but once you get going, no chance. Aerodynamics will come into play further up the scale of magnitudes but even so, a couple of points Cd does not make up a couple of car lengths...further, a lot of these cars will be mapped or even just tuning boxed for an easy 30 or 40 hp extra and even quicker still. It is very rapid and I can't believe that many cars will have much of a chance, especially the types of cars that tend to try it on with you (other hot hatches).
I've not driven an ST, nor a Renault 225/230, so I can't compare with the obvious competitors but I test drove a 56 plate A3 Q 2.0T last year and that was very linear and boring. In fact, after a bad experience with MG's Metro Turbo (bloody money pit and I was only a poor A level student at the time, named driver policy back when you could get away with it) I have shyed away from tubbies ever since.
I recall the Astra Bertone coupe 2.0T being quick (my abuse of Vauxhall fleet test drives has been systematic and repeated on occasion since 2001 or so) and good fun, but the VXR is a leap forward.
Hats off to GM for producing a car that appears like a run of the mill hatch with big wheels to 90% of other users (more so with the SRi pack hatchback CTDIs being easily mistaken for it), but is, in fact, as mad as a box of frogs.
Hang on a minute...So they let a demo car out without checking for a compliance with a TSB for a common fault which, while minor, is potentially hazardous?
Thanks for the tip. It would tally up with the times the horn didn't work (early in the morning when I had lights on).
I'm 99% sure that a car should have a working horn in order to pass an MoT thus you would think this makes the car illegal to drive (although not due for an MoT for a while), and moreso a demonstrator than is supposed to sell the brand?
No wonder GM is in trouble!
Ah well, maybe the Corsa will be better...
Thanks for the tip. It would tally up with the times the horn didn't work (early in the morning when I had lights on).
I'm 99% sure that a car should have a working horn in order to pass an MoT thus you would think this makes the car illegal to drive (although not due for an MoT for a while), and moreso a demonstrator than is supposed to sell the brand?
No wonder GM is in trouble!
Ah well, maybe the Corsa will be better...
Edited by texasjohn on Tuesday 10th February 23:20
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