The more we look at the compact family car segment in Europe, the more a rift begins to emerge. On the one hand, Volkswagen seems to think that it can continue using large 2-liter engines on the Golf, while on the other, almost everybody else is downsizing.
Why is that important? Because many customers are willing to spend €30,000 or more on a compact car as long as it does everything. You can't really do that with a regular 1.6-liter turbodiesel producing roughly 120 hp, so Opel chose to twin-turbocharge the block and discontinue the 2.0 while VW is giving the iron giant more power.
The current generation of the Insignia Country Tourer is the first and likely the last, having already been discontinued from several markets. However, we don't see Opel completely ignoring this type of conversion, seeing as the Adam city car got its Rocks on last year. Sister car Chevrolet (think Korea, not America) is also developing a rough and ready version of the Spark.
Where the mid-size Country Tourer has failed, something based on the new Astra might prove move successful. Purely hypothetically speaking, we present to you the Astra K Country Tourer, rendered by Theophilus Chin. He took the recently launched wagon model and raised the suspension, fitting protective body cladding underneath.
Why would you buy this over an SUV? What SUV? Opel doesn't yet have a competitive compact crossover model, and it would be some time before it arrives. To tempt you into buying a wagon instead of a Qashqai, we want to show you a short video of the Astra Tourer 1.6 BiTurbo undergoing fuel consumption testing on the German Autobahn, where it sips about 3.5 l/100km at 110 km/h. That's mighty impressive, as even vehicles from the class below struggle to meet those numbers.
Power is great, and the Astra will never have as much of it as the Golf, so that applies to the potential comparison between the Alltrack and the Country Tourer. But there's only about a second between them to 100 km/h and the ability to make long journeys cheaply has got to count for something. So we say "bring it on, Opel" even if it might not be available with AWD.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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