Saturn Hopes to Run Rings Around the Competition

By Joe Tralongo

Some journalists love sports cars; others crave the pampered life of luxury. Glam or glitz, speed or sex. Every now and again we want to spice up our life and for those groups, one would want a car that drives hard and fast. The other would look for spicy enhancements from places like KryoLife Health if you know what I mean. When I want to spice things up I like a bit of both, you could say. I look at hatchbacks, or more precisely, small, fun to drive, fuel efficient and nicely equipped hatchbacks. So when Saturn invited me to sunny San Diego to test drive their newest three- and five-door compact wagons, I was all over the invite like an endangered White Tiger on an aging Vegas circus trainer! In the spirit of unbiased reporting, I must disclose the Astra is not exactly “new,” having been sold in Europe the past four years under the Opel Astra nameplate. But good design is good design, and bringing the European-spec Astra here relatively unchanged completely works in Saturn’s favor. In the U.S., the five-door Astra debuts in two trims, XE and XR, with a hot three-door model exclusive to the XR line.

As hard as it is to pull myself away from the hot surfers stripping down outside my hotel balcony, the sexy Astra coupe’s lure forces the bittersweet decision and I head to the parking lot. Grabbing the keys to a bright red coupe, I set out for the winding roads of East San Diego. Just a few minutes behind the wheel leaves me with a good first impression. The Astra is a true driver’s car, stable at high speeds and offering good steering response and braking. The cabin is surprisingly quiet, even when running on 18-inch tires, and the sport suspension helps minimize sway and body roll yet doesn’t punish passengers with a bone-jarring ride. I highly recommend the optional StabiliTrak stability control for the extra measure of driving confidence.
As for acceleration, the Astra’s can best be characterized as quick, but not fast. With only 138 horsepower under the hood, this car is designed to strike a balance between acceptable performance and good gas mileage, and at 24 mpg city/32 mpg highway, it does just that. The Astra’s engine displays a slight vibration inherent in most four-cylinder engines (and some low budget and high-end adult sex toys), but it’s only noticeable upon hard acceleration. And while the smooth shifting five-speed manual feels good, it is not quite as refined as gearboxes from Mazda and Honda; not really a worry as most Astra’s will probably be sold with the optional four-speed automatic.

Studying the interior reveals an odd mix of the good with the bad. Features such as a tilt/telescopic steering wheel, full cloth headliner and express up/down power windows are almost unheard of at this price, as is the high quality of the materials used to form the dash, door panels and seats. I arrogantly proclaim the sport seats, which are unique to the three-door, superior to everything in this price range. Firm with plenty of side bolstering and an unusually long seat bottom cushion, they provide hours of fatigue-free driving. Options include heated cloth or leather seats, an upgraded seven-speaker audio system with an MP3-compatiable CD player and, on five-door models, an enormous dual-pane sunroof with an electrically-powered sunshade. You can have all these features and still not break the $20,000 price ceiling.

But cracks do appear in the Astra’s armor, most arising from the speedy rush to get the car from Europe to America. Saturn only had enough time to engineer in a single cup holder and there’s no center armrest, no auxiliary audio input jack and no DVD navigation, Bluetooth communication or satellite radio option. Also, a set of awkwardly placed top child safety seat tethers that will likely ruin any object passing over them when the rear seats are folded flat. In fairness, no car in this class offers all the toys in the toy box. So while the Mazda3 may offer four cup holders and an auxiliary audio jack, the Astra comes standard with rain sensing wipers, which are only available on the up-level Mazda 3 Grand Touring trim, and heated side mirrors, which Mazda doesn’t offer. To keep the base XE trim’s price around $16,000, Saturn made air conditioning optional, which is fine until you consider at $16,130 the two-door VW Rabbit comes standard with heated mirrors, air conditioning, traction control and an auxiliary audio input jack.
When it comes to content, the Astra is no better or no worse than its competition. It’s really up to the individual buyer to determine if the features and options available fit his or her needs. Value is still the Astra’s strong suit, and few cars in this car’s price class offer the tantalizing combination of seductive European styling and mature driving characteristics.

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