1999 Vauxhall Omega CDX review from UK and Ireland

Worn Track control arm bush and worn Front Brake Disks replaced at about 70000 Miles

Some bulbs have gone.

The one thing this car doesn’t have is looks and kudos.

The two things this car doesn’t have are looks and kudos and a little sun-screen in the back window.

It has everything else!

Look at the specification:

My Omega CDX saloon has a silky 2.5 litre, 24 valve V6 engine putting out 170bhp and plenty of torque. Even at 90000 plus miles the engine idles nicely, and pulls like a traction engine.

It has a five speed manual gearbox that’s smooth and seems to be relatively close ratio. If you want you can really embarrass the baseball-cap-UV-Light-Dustbin-for-an-exhaust Nova-boy-racers, not only from a standing start, but in the handling department as well. Put some decent sticky rubber on the rims like Avon ZZ3s and you will be surprised to find it out handle an array of cars whose drivers would dismiss it because it doesn’t have that famous Bavarian badge.

On the other hand it is great for long distance cruising at sensible speeds. The trip computer has reported 34mpg on a few occasions on a long run, but town driving will soon put that back to 27 mpg after sitting in traffic for any length of time.

Take on a Subaru Impreza (not the WRX) and you’ll give it a run for its money! No, Really!! And get as little as 26mpg. Treat the throttle gently and you can get about 450 miles out of a fifty quid helping of unleaded without crawling around everywhere at under 50 mph.

Town driving is relatively easy, however, as the torquey engine will quite happily pull from 25 mph in fifth gear.

It has brilliant bright headlights, comfortable electrically adjusted front seats, heated front and back, five head restraints, more rear leg room than a Jaguar S-Type, a massive boot, split folding rear seats in the saloon for those odd trips to the DIY whorehouse, electrically adjusted heated door mirrors, automatically dipping anti glare rear view mirror, real plastic wood effect that actually looks OK, leather steering wheel (though I suspect there is some steel in there as well), leather gear knob, carpet thick enough to loose small children in, velour deep enough to sink the Titanic in, electric windows all round (except the windscreen and rear window, that would be silly), interior lights that fade out, air bags everywhere… the list goes on.

The standard Philips CAR500 stereo and 6CD Auto changer sounds pretty good, especially with my MP3 player through the cassette player adapter. I was going to change it for my face off Sony, but there’s little point. Save your money and buy a proper hi-fi for the house.

The climate control is excellent. My wife likes to be warm. 24 degrees and she’s comfortable. I, on the other hand, like it to be about 19 degrees so my brain stays frosty. You can do that with the climate control, 24 degrees or more for the passenger, 18 degrees or less for the driver. How cool is that?

The dash is very well laid out, though the clocks in the binnacle can still be seen in Reading as you approach Swindon. They are huge.

Servicing costs are not too bad. Between £130 and £250, depending on where you go.

The bad points are the rather uninspired styling (though somehow its sister coupe the Holden/Vauxhall Monaro has similar styling, but is a two door coupe and it looks pretty horny).

I know I’ll never convince people that they should save a couple of thousand and buy one because some people still think the overtaking lanes on motorways are called “Fast Lanes”, but if you want comfort, power, economy, reasonably priced servicing costs from main dealers and a fairly bullet proof lifer of a car to drive and cherish till it meets its maker you could do a lot worse.