2001 Holden Astra TS from Australia and New Zealand - Comments

Not much.

At about 4000K radiator fluid started to seep through the welch plug, but this was easily rectified by the dealer service team.

Slight rattle from driver side setabelt housing. I stuck a thin piece of rubber to shut it up.

There is an annoying high pitched rattle coming from underneath the passenger from seat when pushing on the throttle during take off or when on shakey roads. It stops when the car is crusing. Still trying to track it down.

I had my heart settled pretty much on the Astra. It is the best value car in its class. I got it for its looks inside and out and its reputation. I bought a 3 door TS auto with HBD rear spoiler and after market 15" sports alloys with fatter tyers than the stock.

Performance is pretty good for what it is, but don't expect it to be anything more. Its no hot hatch when it comes to screaming raw take offs, but its good enough not to get on your nerves. It has plenty of torque and if your impatient the wheels will spin easily.

The Astra is a superb handler and rides very nicely. Its nimble and athletic and it corners extremely well at speed. Cornering and twisty roads are the best fun. The steering is sharp and responsive and feels great. You have to poke it really hard for it to misbehave. There is very little body roll. Its feels very composed and confident.

Some peope don't like the cabin, but I quite like it. Its no nonsense and it isn't tacky or gimmicky. Thoughtful design throughout. Love the feel and look of the steering wheel. Seats are comfy. Like temperature display. Some plastics used feel cheap, but they are place in less critical places. There's is plenty of storage space in the boot, glove box is pretty big and I like the nifty little storage space just below the steering wheel.

One thing that needs to be done asap is to replace the stereo. I had the cassette player with an after market stacker in the glove box. Tolerable for a while. The standard cassette or cd player looks crap and embarrassing. It's okay, but you only realise how bad it is when you put in a better after market deck. I had a JVC KDSX985 MP3 cd deck and now it sounds great. I might upgrade the speakers too eventhough they're quite okay.

The only annoying thing with the 3 door is that the door is long and B pillar is push all the way back. You have to twist and reach out to pull/press the dock look and the seatbelt.

Agree with the comment on the stereo, the Blaupunkt Cd player I have fitted is OK and is very difficult to make skip unless you hit a big pothole and rip off the front wheels! The speakers on the other hand could have been better. I was dissapointed to find a low wattage, paper cone, single midrange speaker in the rear doors and have since replaced them with a set of Pioneer 150 Watt splits. Midrange are polycarbonate cones and now produce a much firmer bass response and the tweeters fitted near the rear door handle (prior to this installation there were no tweeters in the rear!!) direct the higher frequencies to the ear and provide a very clear top end to the stereo. I still found I was missing the very low frequencies though and set about trying to find a solution. The result... the "Clarion SRV303" sub woofer. At only 7cm thick this 7" active subwoofer is a great space saver and can be fitted in a number of places throughout the car without sacrificing too much room. I opted to fit mine in the boot, the sound quality is now 10 times better than with the initial system. You can feel the bass without being like the 17 year old hoons that you hear coming from 1/4 mile away and the top end is clear even at higher volume.