18/03/2024 The ‘Tourer’ or if you’re Irish and grew up in the last century ‘Estate’ car is perhap the most under appreciated body type you can buy. Designed unashamidly for families that need to carry all-sorts of kit, they never needed to be pretty but today they have to be or else they will drown in a sea of SUVs and crossovers. We’ve tested the Opel Astra Tourer, in diesel guise, and found it to be attractive and a near perfect family car! (See our Astra hatch review here: https://motorhub.ie/opel-astra-review/)
Europeans are bigger estate car fans than the Irish where we seldom come close to the 50/50 split between hatchbacks and estate sales that is often the case in EU markets. Why is this? Well, they are usually more expensive and Ireland is a very price sensitive market, plus in years gone estates did themselves no favours by being quite ugly – the odd premium German machine being the exception. The good news on price is that the Astra hatch starts at €30,295 (SC) and the Sports Tourer is only a grand dearer from €31,295.
The Astra Tourer is a very well proportioned car and is some 60m shorter than the car it replaces thanks in the main to its short front overhang. The Sports tourer has a body that looks like it was designed from the off as a car model in its own right and not like a motoring abomination with a shed grafted on as an afterthought (an unmodified C-pillar being the biggest givaway of lazy design). The Astra Sports Tourer has a long wheelbase (2,732mm) than the hatchback +57mm (wheelbase is gap between the front and rear wheels) and this means inside there is more spapce than you might expect from a car based on a compact hatch.
The boot holds a whopping 600 litres. If you fold the rear seats there is up to 1,634 litres of cargo space. The load height is 600mm and the key dimensiosn are: 4,642 x 1,860 x 1,480 millimetres (L x W x H). Opel has an adaptable cargo floor it calls ‘Intelli-Space’. The PHEV and BEV versions with their need for underfloor space still manage to offer 516 litres and 1,553 litres max space.
The German built Opel Astra Sports Tourer is a multi-fuel car and you can buy versions powered by anything from batteries to the diesel we have on test. Our diesel with its automatic gearbox and excellent fuel consumption made life very easy and uneventful (ahh all that lovely long range form a full tank of diesel – we’ve been testing a lot of EVs lately). The car is comfortable on the open road and perfectly fine for urban use too. As a driver you will feel quite content in the knowledge you have a very flexible machine that isn’t the size of a whale – that is quite handsome too. Michael Sheridan
