Photo: Vossen Wheels
If you're familiar with second-hand prices of the Opel Astra, this tuning project is probably going to bewilder you. There are a million cool cars out there, but somebody decided to put expensive wheels on the Astra J wagon.
Opel is probably going to hate us, but the Astra is still to be considered white goods, even the all-new K generation that won Car of the Year. Most are just family cars or cheap executive cars with 1.6-liter diesel engines. Their most exciting job is to go around a corner without crashing.
Sure, there's the Astra OPC with a million horsepower, but how often do you see one of those? It's hard to put an exact number on the value of the Astra J wagon, but with this particular powertrain, it's got to be around €6,000.
It says "Turbo" on the back of the car, and that usually means there's a 1.6-liter Ecotec under the hood. Most of those have 170 horsepower and will push the Sport Tourer body to 100 km/h (62 mph) in around 8.8 seconds.
Of course, that means plenty of other cool wagons beat it for curb appeal. In fact, we recently featured a SEAT Leon ST Cupra on some very similar CVT alloys. There's also the Golf R Variant and that Focus ST nobody seems to care about.
But on design alone, things aren't that bad. This particular example has nice mica paint and a front bumper in the OPC style. It's not supposed to be like that, right? The suspension has definitely been lowered using new shocks, and we can just about make out a new muffler.
20x8,5-inch VVS-CVT wheels cost about €2,000 plus shipping and tires. Given all the other mods made to this family Opel, you could be looking at a €10,000. For that kind of money, the guy could have bought something like the Skoda Octavia RS of similar model year. So could Peugeot have bought a cult brand in the making or is this the last time the Astra J tries to look cool?
Sure, there's the Astra OPC with a million horsepower, but how often do you see one of those? It's hard to put an exact number on the value of the Astra J wagon, but with this particular powertrain, it's got to be around €6,000.
It says "Turbo" on the back of the car, and that usually means there's a 1.6-liter Ecotec under the hood. Most of those have 170 horsepower and will push the Sport Tourer body to 100 km/h (62 mph) in around 8.8 seconds.
Of course, that means plenty of other cool wagons beat it for curb appeal. In fact, we recently featured a SEAT Leon ST Cupra on some very similar CVT alloys. There's also the Golf R Variant and that Focus ST nobody seems to care about.
But on design alone, things aren't that bad. This particular example has nice mica paint and a front bumper in the OPC style. It's not supposed to be like that, right? The suspension has definitely been lowered using new shocks, and we can just about make out a new muffler.
20x8,5-inch VVS-CVT wheels cost about €2,000 plus shipping and tires. Given all the other mods made to this family Opel, you could be looking at a €10,000. For that kind of money, the guy could have bought something like the Skoda Octavia RS of similar model year. So could Peugeot have bought a cult brand in the making or is this the last time the Astra J tries to look cool?
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