1998 Vauxhall Astra LS from UK and Ireland - Comments

I have owned the car six weeks now, and the only thing to go wrong was a small steering problem, which was repaired free of charge.

When you are over 3000rpm the car goes like a bomb, but when traveling at 80 MPH revs are quite high at 4500rpm, while on a Nova 1.3 it was near 3500rpm.

Interior is great, the black dash and black and blue cloth gives it a sporty image, much better than the grey interior seen on the latest models.

Good fuel economy, averaging about 40MPG.

The 3 door version looks very sporty, but without the insurance hike, only group 4 for the 1.4 16V.

I've now owned this car for around 19 months and it has 43,000 miles on the clock. I haven't had any major problems with it since my last review, but I'm now had it up for sale for a few months and the major put off that I've had back from possible buyers, is that they don't want a 3 door model. The only problem that I've had with the car is that the sunroof wouldn't open. I took it to my local Vauxhall dealer and they informed me it would need a whole new sunroof for £450 plus fitting! I then went down the independent sunroof specialist and they fixed it for £50 (they said that main dealers will not even touch sunroofs). I'm still not pleased with the high revs at 80 mph up-wards, I know its only a 1.4 16v, but it is a bit excessive, but it still does 8p per mile on the motorway so its not all bad news.