Tuesday, June 10, 2014

The Unknown Opel (Part 2)

Now let’s find out how the car behaves on the road.
The car is equipped with a mechanical (manual) transmission, which is an important circumstance, since an automatic gear box wouldn’t allow us to feel the dynamics of this car to the full. The 1.4L Ecotec engine produces 90 HP with an average fuel consumption of 7L /100km-good result for such an engine!

The first test the car was put to was the 0-100km/h acceleration test. According to manufacturer’s data, the Astra had to reach 100km/h in 12.5 seconds, but in my test, the car coped with it in 13.5 seconds. The reason for this was probably the bigger wheels and the age of the car-as we know, beauty demands victims. However, this result won’t be much of hindrance to speed lovers to enjoy the car at high speeds on freeways.
The second step was the brake test. At first, having accelerated the car to 80km/h, I jammed on the brakes-the result was good-the car stopped without deviating from the path. Then I decided to increase the extreme and hit the brakes after accelerating the car to 120 km/h- the car is destitute of ABS and, as expected, it started to feverishly fishtail along the track and completely stopped after travelling a braking distance of 28 meters.
Now I’d like to produce the results of maneuverability test.
Since this Opel Astra was put to test as a sports car, it was expected to show good handling, but unfortunately, the results were slightly disappointing.
During the whole test of maneuverability, I did not exceed the speed of 70km/h, and even at such a moderate speed, the Astra was unstable and deviating from the path given, moreover, the distance between traffic cones was 25 meters, instead of standard 20 meters. It is worth mentioning that neither the chassis nor the suspension of this “sports” Astra is provided for extreme drive.

The car is externally restyled and looks like a real sports car, but the chassis is no different from the base version.
Concluding this test, I’d like to add that, although this Opel did not pass all the tests brilliantly, be sure of one thing: this car will never go unnoticed along the streets of Yerevan.

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