GilesGuthrie
Staff Emeritus
- 11,038
- Edinburgh, UK
- CMDRTheDarkLord
Anyone who wonders what I thought of the last Vectra should read this post.
It just so happened that our car was off the road for a while recently, and Susan's work provided her with a car for that period. It was a new Vectra 2.0DTi. hatchback.
I was quite intrigued about it, and so although I wasn't on the insurance, we found a quiet area of an industrial estate, and I had a bit of a run.
I am amazed that, in spite of spending in excess of $1bn reinventing the Vectra, they haven't made it any better. In fact, they've made it worse. Here's why:
The 2.0 Turbo Diesel engine is almost completely gutless. This 2.0DTi feels slower than the 1.7DTi engine fitted to the old car. You'd forgive this if there were a significant improvement in refinement, but no. It sounds like a tractor.
Moving down the drivetrain, the gearbox feel is improved slightly, as is the tendency of the car to spin the wheels unless the clutch is grannied. These are the only plus points I'm going to find, so you'd best enjoy them now.
Brakes are initially good too, with good feel up at the top of the pedal movement, but this quickly goes away with increasing brake pressure. The car is also all-too-keen to tell you that it has ABS, which isn't good.
In terms of the handling, I found it to be wallowy and imprecise. Initial turn-in was almost completely lacking, as if the power steering was just not doing anything. This was followed up by sharp mid-corner response that the suspension simply coudn't cope with. This would initially result in over-compensation, turning too far, which led to a mid-corner correction that, again, the suspension couldn't handle. With increasing time, the driver adapts to the slow inputs that the car requires, turning in earlier but shallower.
We've established that the suspension is no good for handling, so is it good at ride quality? Well, no. The lack of body control that the handling testing highlighted is replicated through the car's complete inability to damp out potholes. As a driver, you can feel the whole car shaking when you go through the slightest imperfections in the road, which is compounded by the sound of the suspension crashing around in its mountings.
On the inside, it's well put together. The interior is fussy in places, with lots of blanking plates where equipment may be placed in more luxurious models. All the gaps line up consistently though, which adds to the impression of build quality. However this is immediately taken away by the low-rent plastics in use, plus the sheer swathes of this stuff all over the place. The windscreen is literally miles from the front of the dash, leading to vast featureless tracts of artificially textured plastic. This is replicated in the centre console also, which looks nice from ten feet away, but closer proximity reveals tackiness and cheapness. This is evidenced in the ventilation controls, where a button purporting to be a heated front screen does no more than wind the ventilation fan up to the speed (and noise) of a jet engine.
The low rent plastics extend to the steering wheel also, which becomes something that it is a joy to let go of. The wheel-mounted stereo controls (which were about the best thing on the old car) have been corrupted beyond belief - in our four days with the car, we could never quite work them out. And what is it with the "MEMORY-U" thing on the tuner? Why doesn't it simply scan up and down the band, like a normal car? While we're on the subject of the stereo, it was basically quite good, but had real problems keeping hold of the timing on CD-Rs.
Elsewhere, there are too many damn cubby holes, none of which are the right size. There's nowhere to put CDs, and the "sunglasses holder" is one of the most pointless things in the whole car. The handbrake lever is too close to the driver, again, offset so that they can get some roller-blind covered cubby hole that's too small for anything bigger than a packet of mints.
In conclusion, GM have managed to replace the fairly unattractive outgoing model with one of death-defying ugliness. It in fact looks like it's already been in a motorway pile-up, which probably jsut saves the sales reps and minicab drivers the bother.
The interior is significantly worse, being less intuitive to operate, and managing to appear of even lower quality. The feel of the major and minor controls is worse, both in their actual surfaces and their responses.
But the most surprising difference is in the dynamics. I really believed that the outgoing model would be the nadir for GM in the midsize saloon market. How wrong I was. Progress, alive and well and in reverse at GM.
Hateful, hateful car.
It just so happened that our car was off the road for a while recently, and Susan's work provided her with a car for that period. It was a new Vectra 2.0DTi. hatchback.
I was quite intrigued about it, and so although I wasn't on the insurance, we found a quiet area of an industrial estate, and I had a bit of a run.
I am amazed that, in spite of spending in excess of $1bn reinventing the Vectra, they haven't made it any better. In fact, they've made it worse. Here's why:
The 2.0 Turbo Diesel engine is almost completely gutless. This 2.0DTi feels slower than the 1.7DTi engine fitted to the old car. You'd forgive this if there were a significant improvement in refinement, but no. It sounds like a tractor.
Moving down the drivetrain, the gearbox feel is improved slightly, as is the tendency of the car to spin the wheels unless the clutch is grannied. These are the only plus points I'm going to find, so you'd best enjoy them now.
Brakes are initially good too, with good feel up at the top of the pedal movement, but this quickly goes away with increasing brake pressure. The car is also all-too-keen to tell you that it has ABS, which isn't good.
In terms of the handling, I found it to be wallowy and imprecise. Initial turn-in was almost completely lacking, as if the power steering was just not doing anything. This was followed up by sharp mid-corner response that the suspension simply coudn't cope with. This would initially result in over-compensation, turning too far, which led to a mid-corner correction that, again, the suspension couldn't handle. With increasing time, the driver adapts to the slow inputs that the car requires, turning in earlier but shallower.
We've established that the suspension is no good for handling, so is it good at ride quality? Well, no. The lack of body control that the handling testing highlighted is replicated through the car's complete inability to damp out potholes. As a driver, you can feel the whole car shaking when you go through the slightest imperfections in the road, which is compounded by the sound of the suspension crashing around in its mountings.
On the inside, it's well put together. The interior is fussy in places, with lots of blanking plates where equipment may be placed in more luxurious models. All the gaps line up consistently though, which adds to the impression of build quality. However this is immediately taken away by the low-rent plastics in use, plus the sheer swathes of this stuff all over the place. The windscreen is literally miles from the front of the dash, leading to vast featureless tracts of artificially textured plastic. This is replicated in the centre console also, which looks nice from ten feet away, but closer proximity reveals tackiness and cheapness. This is evidenced in the ventilation controls, where a button purporting to be a heated front screen does no more than wind the ventilation fan up to the speed (and noise) of a jet engine.
The low rent plastics extend to the steering wheel also, which becomes something that it is a joy to let go of. The wheel-mounted stereo controls (which were about the best thing on the old car) have been corrupted beyond belief - in our four days with the car, we could never quite work them out. And what is it with the "MEMORY-U" thing on the tuner? Why doesn't it simply scan up and down the band, like a normal car? While we're on the subject of the stereo, it was basically quite good, but had real problems keeping hold of the timing on CD-Rs.
Elsewhere, there are too many damn cubby holes, none of which are the right size. There's nowhere to put CDs, and the "sunglasses holder" is one of the most pointless things in the whole car. The handbrake lever is too close to the driver, again, offset so that they can get some roller-blind covered cubby hole that's too small for anything bigger than a packet of mints.
In conclusion, GM have managed to replace the fairly unattractive outgoing model with one of death-defying ugliness. It in fact looks like it's already been in a motorway pile-up, which probably jsut saves the sales reps and minicab drivers the bother.
The interior is significantly worse, being less intuitive to operate, and managing to appear of even lower quality. The feel of the major and minor controls is worse, both in their actual surfaces and their responses.
But the most surprising difference is in the dynamics. I really believed that the outgoing model would be the nadir for GM in the midsize saloon market. How wrong I was. Progress, alive and well and in reverse at GM.
Hateful, hateful car.
Thank god we dont get the diesel models
