Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer GSE - long-term review

A few months into ownership of Vauxhall’s range-topping Astra GSE estate – sorry, Sports Tourer – spanning the end of summer and straight into the cold winter months has allowed what marketing types like to call ‘a stretching of its bandwidth’.

To regular humans, that basically means ‘it’s been through a lot’. No actual physical stretching is required. Although that won't actually be possible if you’ve been posted into the rear bench, stuck behind those ginormous AGR-certified sports seats. Arf arf. Anyway.

It’s been a mostly biddable companion, offering up little drama – in both a good way and perhaps a disappointing way – plenty of comfort and a realignment (mostly by me) of how a range-topping Astra GSE estate should behave. Here are some good bits, and some not-so-good bits.

Good: it’s very comfortable

Those massive seats continue to impress. They’re supremely comfortable, well supported, and crucially in these cold winter months, heat up very quickly. Big green tick for these.

Not so good: it's a tad cramped and claustrophobic in the back

YMMV, of course, but we're increasingly finding the rear seats don't offer up masses of space if the front two passengers require a decent amount of legroom. Transportation of some very important cargo (read: elderly family members) was fine, mostly because said cargo is short. When cargo is, um, longer, things have gotten tricky, with a bit of seat and limb Tetris required. Let's move out of this analogy and into...

... those seats. The seat backs are huge, and block out a fair bit of the cabin. No doubt this applies to all cars with Massive Sports Seats, but it's worth noting.

Good: it rides nicely

The standard-fit Koni FSD dampers on the GSE react very well to British roads, filtering out most of the crap to keep you and your passengers level, comfortable and unshaken.

Not so good: it keeps locking and unlocking itself

If, say, you’re attempting to unfurl the unruly charging cable stored underneath the boot floor in order to juice up the 12.4kWh battery, and then attempting to plug it in, the car will randomly lock itself. Despite you standing right next to it. So you go to unlock it but... too slow! It’s already unlocked itself. So you continue plugging it in when – that’s right! – we’re locked.

You will do this dance until either a) you finish plugging everything in, or b) you give up and go inside.

Good: it’s a handsome estate

It’s certainly a more serious-looking thing than its PSA stablemate, the Peugeot e-308 SW – quite literally, more straight-faced thanks to that ‘vizor’ front and blockier lines, but overall it’s a clean, unfussy design. We've spotted Astra STs in that delightful blue sneaking around town, and brighter, bolder colours certainly do it more favours than the silver of our car.

Not so good: the buttons can be a bit laggy and unresponsive

The start/stop button sometimes needs a few presses to wake up. Ditto the seat heater button.

And once – only once, mind, so it’s not representative, but is noteworthy – the entire dash turned itself off. While on the motorway. The car was running fine, I just couldn’t see how fast I was going, nor where I was going (on the sat nav, not metaphorically). It returned after a while.

Good: it's quiet and comfortable at speed

Sensing a theme here? This range-topping, 'sporty' Astra estate is actually a very comfortable car. Transportation of some very important cargo (read: a dog) was fine, because it's quiet when up at motorway speeds, and settled around town.

Not so good: the combustion engine and gearbox do not gel very well

We’ll cover the explodey, oily, dirty part of the Astra GSE ST in a separate update soon, but in summary, it’s not a particularly appealing drivetrain. The electric part’s actually great – punchy, and really suits the Astra’s modern suit and high-tech ambitions.

But when the engine kicks in (admittedly rather cleanly), the gearbox feels slow to respond and when it hangs on to gears (not when flat out, but just when pootling through town), it reveals the 1.6-litre four-pot turbo’s drone. It is not a good drone.

Potentially an irrelevant analogy, and perhaps one for the hardcore Vauxhall nerds out there: I once owned an old four-pot C20XE-engined Calibra, and that sounded brilliant. This… does not.