Serving up Saturn style
San Jose, California — Coming from General Motors’ Euro-brand (Opel), the new-for-’08 Saturn Astra is a good idea on many fronts.
It’s a small car, for one thing, perfect for urban use, and available as either a three or five-door hatchback. The dimensions of the Astra are virtually unchanged from its Opel counterpart, which is dominating its segment in Europe. (The car is the second-best-selling small car in Europe, and the No. 1 three-door brand.)
The main changes to the car for North American markets are different headlights, better door panels and headliner (to reflect more stringent North American safety standards), the addition of a second catalytic converter and, for Canadian models, a standard heated oil pan.
At the curbside, though, the vehicle still looks like its Opel counterpart, just with Saturn badging.
The first Astras in this country showed up at this year’s Canadian Car of the Year TestFest back in October, where they made an impression in the small car category, and I got to get back into the full line of them at the North American launch last week.
Both the three and five-door styles will be sold here, and GM is positioning the Astra for a lot of conquest sales on this side of the Atlantic by selling it with a good level of standard equipping for its low price.
Even the base level doesn’t punish a buyer for not laying out a pile of money, with such features as four-wheel ABS, tire pressure monitor, six-speaker stereo, six airbags, Stabilitrak (on three-door models) and OnStar coming as standard equipment.
Safety is one of Astra’s big selling points: in addition to the six airbags the car has a five-star crash test rating from NCAP (the European body that regulates such things). North American data from NHTSA isn’t released yet, but GM is anticipating good things.
The basics of the Astra are as follows: all models use a 1.8-litre DOHC inline four-cylinder engine, which gives the small vehicle a respectable max horsepower of 140 (and 126 lb.-ft. of torque), and puts the ponies to the road through either a five-speed manual transmission or a four-speed automatic.
Either transmission functions smoothly, and while I would be picking the manual five, the automatic showed no performance issues in city and highway use.
Incidentally, as a sort of pointless aside, I took a three-door XR-trimmed Astra into Los Angeles during rush hour. While this is not something I recommend (I mean, yeesh! I have seen bad traffic before, but this was eight lanes of Ugly that just didn’t relent, like some sort of horrible life-and-death video game) it was a good test of the road manners of the car, and the little Saturn held it together quite nicely.
The ride and handling are quite good for this segment, with the car suspended on MacPherson independent front struts, and semi-independent torsion beam rear. The steering is electric-hydraulic combo, and noticeably tighter on the quick-ratio rig used in the three-door XR model.
The interior of the car has decent headroom in both front and rear seats (although if you are going to be regularly putting adults in the rear of the car, you really want the five-door version), and upholstery in a rugged, durable cloth on all seating surfaces makes a comfortable cabin for long drives.
The inside has all the convenience items one generally looks for — ample cupholders, easy-to-reach-controls, good fitting of all components, and a lot of sunglasses compartments. Too many sunglasses compartments, in fact. How many sunglasses do you own? You can fit ’em all in here.
The Astra is targeted squarely at the leaders of this segment, Honda’s Civic and the Mazda3, and makes its case to prospective buyers (projected to be the 25-35-year-old, trendy types who like a dollop of style with their daily ride) with the value-for-dollars comparison to either competitor.
GM’s marketing men are quick to point out that Astra handily takes the advantage over makes like Mazda3 or Civic (or Volkswagen’s Rabbit) once the the competitor vehicles are similarly equipped to match what comes as standard equipment on the Astra.
The newest Saturn is available as either an XE five-door, XR (also a fiver), or the XR three-door. Myself, I would lean toward the three for its quick-ratio steering, sport seats and lowered chassis (the three-door XR is 15 mm closer to the ground), although the practicality of a five-door would make more sense if I had any friends that I drove around regularly.
Available as well equipped base model in any of the trims, the built-in-Belgium Astra begins at an MSRP of $17,900 for the XE, $20,490 for an XR five-door or $21,225 for the three-door sporty XR.
Fact File
2008 Saturn Astra
MSRP range: $17,900 - $21,225
Configuration: front engine, FWD
Engine: 1.8L DOHC 16-valve VVT inline 4-cylinder
Transmissions: 5-speed manual, 4-speed automatic
Horsepower: 140 @6300 rpm
Torque: 126 lb.-ft. @ 3800 rpm
Fuel required: 45.5 litres, regular
EnerGuide fuel ratings (L/100 km): 8.4 (city, automatic) 6.6 (hwy, automatic)
Warranty: 3 yr/60,000 km basic, 5 yr/160,000 km powertrain
Competition: Hyundai Accent, Nissan Versa, Toyota Yaris
Highlights: Good array of standard equipment, Euro styling and eye-appeal, low buy-in
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