Astra: like an Insignia shrunk in a tumbledryer
official teaser video showing the new Vauxhall Astra
dispatching with a VW Golf and Ford Focus (albeit at the hands of touring car legend Fabrizio Giovanardi), Vauxhall has released these, the first undisguised interior shots of the new car.
Of course, the most interesting aspect of the new Astra will be the forthcoming VXR version, but we'll have to wait for that. The five-door won't be unveiled in the flesh until the Frankfurt motor show this September, with first UK deliveries at the end of the year.
Very nice, but where's the VXR version?
The VXR version hasn't been confirmed yet, but there will be plenty of hat-eating at PistonHeads if one doesn't come along. A new VXR Astra would almost certainly be based on the three-door Sport Hatch version, though, and that won't be here until 2011.
Until then, fans of fast Vauxhalls will have to console themselves with the fact that the interior of the new Astra, which draws heavily on the Insignia's interior for inspiration, should be a rather nice place. Especially if it manages to match the Insignia's quality levels, as Vauxhall aims to do. "Our goal was to make the perceptual quality in the interior of the next generation Astra as great as that of the Vauxhall Insignia," says GM's Peter Hasselbach, who is in charge of such matters.
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