Nothing.
The car has excellent road holding abilities and good drive out of corners.
The engine revs very freely and the car is surprisingly quick if you keep the revs going.
Torque is just great and it pulls from 40kph in 5th gear on the flat!
The gearbox is not a slick change, for instance moving from 3rd to 2nd often baulks. The other gears are fine as long as you take your time. The gearbox is better than a few months ago and hopefully will free up some more.
When changing down, the engine actually revs up a few hundred revs as you declutch which initially made it difficult to do smooth gear changes. I have got used to it, but would prefer the engine not to do that.
Everything is to hand from the driver's point of view with a good range of adjustment on the steering wheel.
The big gripes are lack of rear head restraints which is really bad, and the lack of an optional factory fitted tilt and slide sunroof.
At the 15000km service, there was found to be a slight oil leak on the transaxle. This is to be fixed under warranty at the next service.
The rear headrest are on the 2002 spec Astras. Not much help to you but to the prospective buyers out there.
It has now done 33,300 K's and the windscreen washers have gone onto half power! You have to keep pulling the lever rapidly to get it to squirt at anything like new power.
I shall get it fixed at the next service. Also the power steering, when reversing slowly seems 'notchy' and a bit clunky, although its fine when on the move. Again I shall mention this at the next service. Because I only get to drive the car at the weekends (my wife uses it during the week) I tend to notice these things more I guess.
Overall still going well and the gearbox is getting better at changing gear, but still not as good as my sons 8 month old Nissan Pulsar.
The reving up of the engine when driving normally and changing gear is still a pain... and makes it sound like you can't change gear properly. Why can't this be fixed by Holden??
I just bought a 2002 Astra CD and also find it really hard to change from 3rd to 2nd. I originally found it hard to change from 1st to 2nd, but worked out that I had to wait until it got to about 40rpm before changing into 2nd. This has now fixed the problem. Other than that, this car has everything you could possibly want. I couldn't be happier (except for the gear changes).
Well its now 3 years old in FEB 2004 and has done 52000k to date and, touch wood, no problems apart from the windscreen washer which was fixed with a clean out at service. Still makes me smile when I drive it though twisty pieces of road, around Kiama for instance, and the seats are still hard!
The gearbox is a lot better now as long as you don't want to do 'racing' changes.
Overall I would still buy another one and will look with interest when the new shape comes out, but only look as this one has to do me for a few more years yet!
There are a few rattles, but these could be due to all the junk that accumulates in the door pockets, boot, and everywhere else that can be found to put sweet tins, CD cases and folding camp chairs..
Has now clocked up 56000k and had to have it towed away to the dealer!!, the problem was that the key would not turn in the ignition lock, and no the steering lock was not on. Got the NRMA to have a look, via holden assist, and they fixed it by blowing compressed air into the lock, to cool it down. The guy reckoned it was a common fault and that there were plastic shims in the lock that warped in the heat. It was around 38 degrees that day. Anyway I switched off again and tried to start it again - same result - the key would not turn and that's when I organised it to be towed to a dealer. They told me they rebuilt the lock, and so far so good, its been a week now. anyone else had similar problems??
Well, just had a 60k service done on the car, cost --- $850 dollars (aus)!!! that's a suprise that I didn't see coming, and really 60k is not a great mileage, if it had 100k then I would not have been quite so surprised. Motto always check the cost of servicing as a factor when you are buying a new car..
The traction control and emission lights keep coming on then the TC light will go out after a day or so followed by the emission light after another couple of days. Following that they both come on together again after another day or so to repeat the cycle.
Hello MR. Holden main dealer...
Note: A Comments RSS Feed 
is available. New comments appear in the Members Area before the main site