SA Road Tests

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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
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We have fun with the 2012 Opel Astra GTC 1.4 Enjoy

Art meets heart

Hello and welcome to today’s lesson in Opel Acronyms. We begin with OPC and GTC. OPC refers to “Opel Performance Centre.” Cars wearing this label may be likened to an uncompromising dominatrix who insists you perform to the standard she requires or know that you will be thrown aside. GTC, on the other hand, means “Grand Touring Coupé,” a kinder type of car that will be gentle with you until you are ready to deliver your best. Are we clear? Thank you.

Heading up the Astra family, two beautifully crafted sisters appeal to different levels of skill, passion and budget. These GTC siblings, Enjoy and Sport, have 1.4- and 1.6- litre turbocharged engines developing 103 kW and 132 kW respectively and six-speed manual gearboxes. We hung out with the baby sister.

Although both are Astras and strongly resemble their five-door counterparts, they share very few components with them. The designers were handed a clean sheet and told they didn’t need to dig too deeply into the common parts bin, either. The result is a car that uses the same Delta ll platform but sits 15mm lower, has wider front and rear tracks and runs on a slightly longer wheelbase.

Apart from the lower sports chassis, HiPerStrut front suspension off the Insignia OPC helps overcome torque steer, while the torsion beam rear end with Watt’s linkage minimises lateral axle movement. Electronic driver aids include ABS, ESP, traction control, braking assistance and steering brake control. Six airbags are fitted. Other standard kit includes powered windows and mirrors, front fog lamps, automatic headlights and wipers, cloth-covered sports seats with lots of adjustments, a single channel air conditioner, rear parking assistance and cruise control with speed limiter. An onboard computer and a seven-speaker sound system with MP3 capability, USB, auxiliary and Bluetooth are part of the deal.

As mentioned above, GTCs are sporty without being as intense as OPCs. The seats hold but do not grab, throttle response is immediate and gratifying but not borderline scary, ride quality is well damped but not harsh, while steering is quick and precise but not twitchy like a kart. It is altogether more refined and easier to live with; something a thirty-ager could be happy shuttling his or her kids in. There is debate on the subject of two doors vs. four, but Europeans apparently favour two because they know the heirs won’t be able to open doors and spill themselves onto the roadway.

Practicality extends to the luggage compartment. It measures 380 litres in capacity, loads at just below waist height, has a low lip and is about 40cm deep. A horizontal divider gives you a choice of having a shallow secret compartment for things like laptops or adjusting it down to lie flat on the boot floor. Naturally, the rear seatbacks fold flat to extend storage, just like its regular hatchback counterparts. The spare is a steel spacesaver.

A minor drawback of the GTC’s coupé styling is that rear side windows and back screen are fairly narrow, restricting outward vision but that’s what mirrors are for, right? While niggling, we noted that interior fit and finish, while better than on the Corsa OPC, was not up to the standard set by other German manufacturers. Obviously no car is perfect, but within its design parameters and intent, the Astra GTC 1400 combines sportiness, comfort and practicality very well.

The numbers
Price: R287 000
Engine: 1364 cc, GM Family 0, four-cylinder, turbocharged
Power: 103 kW at 4900 rpm
Torque: 200 Nm between 1850 and 4900 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 9,9 seconds
Maximum speed: 201 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 7,8 l/100 km
Tank: 56 litres
Warranty: 5 years/120 000 km with roadside assistance
Service Plan: 5 years/90 000 km, at 15 000 km- or 1 year intervals



What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.

What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so I do actually exist.

I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!

Comments?
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