OPEL Astra GTC Review

Opel wanted to give the GTC its own identity and fortunately it hasn’t done this by asking the marketing team to try to force the people to cut off the Astra part of the car’s designation. Instead, it offers designers full freedom and also gave the engineers some, asking them to send the car far from the 5-door Astra. The result is an interesting proposal that’s definitely worth taking into consideration if you’re looking for this kind of car.

The Astra GTC is not quite a warm hatch. While it’s on-paper specs show a smart front suspension, adaptive dampers, albeit optional and a 180 hp turbocharged petrol engine, in the real world the car can’t face driving that sits above 7 or 8 tenths. It lacks some of the hardware necessary to do this, the modest torque figure is a good example and it wasn’t set up in such a way.

However, if you understand this car and use it for relaxed a mildly fast drives, it manages to offer a refined experience. The best setup we see is you getting behind the wheel with your lady friend in the passenger’s seat, going out for a drive. At a certain point during our test drive, we came across a small group of girls and when we asked them if they wanted a short ride, it only took them 1 second to look at the yellow car, giggle and scream "Yeeey!"

You can also rely on it for long trips, as it is generous with all passengers, as well as with the luggage and it also handles city driving well. However, the 1.6-liter turbocharged engine is rather thirsty if you try to drive it hard. During our test drive, we could reach values ranging from 10 to 20 liters per 100 km on urban roads and while the first is reasonable compared to the official value, the latter shouldn’t have been reached by a car that doesn’t manage to deliver the performance of a hot hatch.

Of course, if you want to enjoy the visual charms of a GTC while showing other cars your rear end you can go for the bonkers new OPC incarnation, but the hot hatch version of the Astra is placed too high on the pricing range compared to most of its competitors.

Back to the GTC we drove, we have to tell you that this is one of those cars that makes sure the Astra line won’t be put on the shelf like the Vectra was when Opel replaced it with the Insignia after 3 generations, as it comes with personality.