Our cars Same difference


The exact differences between two cars in the same range can be difficult to pin down, as our Vauxhall Astras have proved.


Sean Keywood


When we take cars on long-term test at Business Car, part of the motivation is to pick up detail we might have missed during the shorter test drives we carry out for our regular reviews. However, as it turns out, even our usual six-month long-term spells might not be enough to catch everything. This is something I’ve personally discovered since switching my previous Vauxhall Astra Ultimate for my current GSE test car, and discovering things I thought were new with the GSE, only to find out they were actually installed with the Ultimate also, just hadn’t been switched on.


As I mentioned in my first report on the GSE last month, one of these is the Driver Welcome function, which slides the driver’s seat back when the ignition is turned off with the aim of aiding exit and entry. Having


investigated the car’s settings, I was, as I’d hoped, able to turn this off, since it didn’t provide any benefit for me personally. Another feature that it turns out appeared on the Ultimate as well as the GSE is Active Sport Sound. This is a system that, when switched on, amplifies the sound of the engine via the car’s audio speakers when the Sport drive mode is selected. My initial reaction was that this was rather incongruous with a plug-in hybrid,


Vauxhall Astra GSE 1.6 225PS Plug-in Hybrid 8-Speed Auto


P11D price £41,745 As tested £42,245 Official consumption 256mpg Our average consumption 44.8mpg Mileage 2,547


although with the more sports-focused nature of the GSE spec, it perhaps at least makes a little more sense with this car than with the Ultimate. Having now tested this on the road, I would say the effect is fairly moderate, and at any rate, the four-cylinder engine note the system is amplifying is hardly the most melodious sound ever produced by a car. In terms of evaluating how convincing the GSE is as a performance choice, it seems unlikely this system will prove much of a factor. One thing that actually is different between the Ultimate and the GSE is the storage location for the electric charging cable. I noted during the Ultimate test my approval of the neat case, with magnetic lid, provided for this purpose. However, it turns out this was because of the location of a speaker fitted to the Ultimate cars on Vauxhall’s press fleet, and with the


Why we’re running it


To see if a sportier plug-in hybrid makes sense.


GSE I have a more traditional hidden compartment under the boot floor where the cable can be stored, which clearly offers practicality benefits when the whole of the car’s 352-litre boot is required. Having mentioned the charging cable, I should note that I don’t personally use it very often – this feels like an opportune point to issue my usual caveat that, since I have no home charging facilities, the batteries of my plug-in test cars are rarely charged, so the fuel economy figures I record shouldn’t be seen as very representative of what the powertrain can achieve given the right conditions. I offer this in a spirit of clarity which is not adhered to by the car itself, or at least not by its instruction manual, which when I consulted it in the course of writing this article, I discovered had many of its pages shuffled randomly out of order – potentially frustrating should one need to look something up quickly by the roadside.


Standard equipment:  Adaptive LED pixel headlights with high beam assist, LED front fog lights, LED tail lights and DRLs, 18in diamond-cut black alloy wheels, dark-tinted rear windows, black roof, alloy- effect pedals, dual-zone climate control with air quality sensor, keyless entry and start, heated steering wheel, heated windscreen, heated front seats, automatic wipers, Alcantara seat trim, electrically heated and folding door mirrors, load-through rear-seat armrest, panoramic sunroof, 10in touchscreen, wireless Apple Carplay and Android Auto connectivity, 10in digital instrument cluster, head-up display, wireless smartphone charger, 360-degree parking camera, front and rear parking sensors, adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning with lane keep assist, lane change assist with side blind spot alert, lane positioning assist, rear cross traffic alert, automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection, traffic sign recognition, driver drowsiness alert, GSE front and rear bumpers, sports steering, GSE chassis set-up, GSE ESP settings.


WEBSITE Please visit www.businesscar.co.uk/tests/long-term-test/ for previous reports on our fleet www.businesscar.co.uk | February 2024 | 47


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