New Astra launch: Q&A with Stuart Harris from Vauxhall

By Adam Leveridge

On Sunday, the Brands Hatch circuit in Kent played host to the final rounds of the 2009 British Touring Car Championship, during which touring car legend Fabrizio Giovanardi failed to secure a third consecutive BTCC title for Vauxhall.

The race meeting marked the end of Vauxhall’s involvement in the sport, 20 years after they made their debut and John Cleland took his Astra GTE to a championship victory.

But, while it was a sad day for Vauxhall and the BTCC, the Luton-based manufacturer celebrated the UK launch of its new Astra, which made its global debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September.

At the event, totallymotor's Adam Leveridge bagged an interview with Vauxhall’s Group Product Manager Stuart Harris to get the inside line of the launch.

This is how it went.

Adam Leveridge (Q): Hi Stuart, thanks for taking the time to speak to us.

How are you?

Stuart Harris: Great thanks.

Q: So, getting down to business, I heard the new Astra is 13 per cent greener than the outgoing model, despite being heavier. Is this true?

SH: Yes but that’s just efficiency in the aerodynamics.

One of the big things in this car is its aerodynamics.

With a five-door or three-door hatch it’s notoriously difficult to get any sort of decent aerodynamics on the car…

Q: As we saw in the British Touring Cars with the Astra Sport Hatch?

SH: …Exactly, that was a nightmare.

So with the new Astra, because we’ve had to stretch the nose and then proportion the rest of the car around it, it has given us a decent aero package.

So, although it’s heavier, with a little bit of extra efficiency in the engine, we’ve made an improvement on its Co2 emissions.

Q: I know Vauxhall are leaving British Touring Cars, but do you think the new Astra would be a better Touring Car than the outgoing model?

SH: IT would be, yeah.


Q: The Insignia would be too big to go Touring Car racing wouldn’t it?

SH: No I think we’d use the Insignia just because of the rear suspension.

Because although you’re allowed to have a good old fiddle for racing, when you’re doing a one-off set of suspension components that would be truly multi functional, whereas with the Astra you can only go so far.

The problem with that is it’s size and weight, but we’d use a carbon-fibre roof and bonnet.

We’d make it fit somehow.

Q: So, what other major differences are there with the new Astra compared to the outgoing model?

SH: I think it’s fair to say, much like the Insignia was completely new, that the only thing which shares any relation to the old car is thee rear axle, which has been updated with the Watts-linkage.

For us, the days of the old-car and tinkering with it have gone.

To keep up with the competition, you have to make a jump forward and the new Astra is a big jump from the old car.

People are saying that, on the outside it’s an improvement, but it’s not a huge leap forward.

But on the inside and with driver handling, they’re saying that we’ve taken a massive leap forward.

That’s what we concentrated on…

Q: So you say there has been a vast improvement with the interior of the new Astra, but can you be more specific on how it has improved?

SH: Well the main thing is the cockpit feels and looks to be more sculpted.

Whereas on the older cars, interiors were made up of slabs, cubes and Toblerone shapes, it didn’t give the driver anything to engage with.

The new Astra is a nice place to be.

Certainly from a passenger’s point of view, where they were looking at plastic facias, now there are contours and a bit of colour.

There’s just a better feel when you get into the car.

In the older cars we opted for hard plastics, but now we use softer materials and a lot more details has gone into the fit and finish.

On the Insignia, the interior curves round, but we tried to play that down in the new Astra because you haven’t got the canvas to play with in smaller cars.

We don’t want people to get into the Astra and want to get out again as quickly as possible.

Q: Why did use decided to use electronic parking and braking in the new Astra?

SH: It’s very much the in-Vogue thing at the moment, mainly because everybody is on about interior space and you get so much more if you just have this system rather than having a big cut-out moulding.

But it’s not cheap.

It costs much more because there’s quite a lot of technology that goes into it.

The other reason is to stop people doing handbrake turns… (laughing)

Q: So when you’re designing the car, do you design it from the inside out?

SH: It is designed inside out.

With a five-door hatchback you’re looking at a fairly generic design, but when you put the new Astra up against it’s competitors we believe we have the freshest design.

When you get to the interior, the whole idea of it was to make a miniature Insignia and when you see future cars, you’ll see that they are like Russian dolls.

The important thing with the outside is pedestrian safety.

If you look under the bonnet you’ll see there’s a lot of space and on the Astra in particular we’ve got some of the lowest insurance groupings in the class.

The whole front-end is a one piece deformable structure and the bonnet area is smaller so in a front-end impact you just damage the front of the car instead of crushing the bonnet or anything like that.

Underneath the bonnet there’s a lot of space at the head of the car, so when somebody jumps out in-front of you, you’ve got a big gap between the car and the engine block which saves on costs and parts.

So, all of a sudden, the insurance premium on this car is four or five groups lower than the outgoing Astra.

Q: I’m not sure about that, because if you smash the front-end of the car, it’s going to cost a fortune to replace that huge piece of bodywork, isn’t it?

SH: Not anymore because things have moved on.

You’ve got a piece of sheet metal, it goes in the body-shop for three to four days and, because it’s a deformable structure, it just gets a scuff marks.

It’s all these weird little practicalities that are coming out as a by-product of things we have to do.

Q: And a VXR model, when is that coming out?

SH: It’s about two years away because that takes a bit more effort.

When the new Astra VXR comes out it’ll go back to its slightly wild roots, it’ll be a daft car.

Q: How daft? More so than the current model?

SH: Yes.

Q: Just without the torque-steer?

SH: Yes. (laughing)

You can get the bigger engines in the smaller cars without launching yourself into a hedge now.

Q: But it was the same with the old Vectra VXR too.

SH: Yes, but not as much as Jeremy Clarkson likes to tell everybody.

Q: What engine will you put in the Astra VXR, the 2.0 litre turbo?

SH: The 2.2 litre.

Q: What power-output could you get it up to?

SH: Well in the US it’s up to 350bhp.

Q: Are you going to try to beat the Ford Focus RS then?

SH: No.

Q: but you’re going to put in a bit more power than you’ve got at the moment?

SH: Yes a bit more.

The Focus is a horsepower dead-end, but the amusing thing is, I sat behind one in my Insignia VXR and it was faster.

The only thing with the Focus is that they’ve put all that power into a brick.

Q: Are you going to sell the old car alongside the new Astra?

SH: We will sell the old three-door, the Twintop convertible and the old Estate, but the new Estate car will come in around October next year.

Q: Will the new Twintop have a folding metal roof?

SH: Well this is a point that’s up for debate.

There’s something not right about them.

It’s an awful lot of money, we sell about 5,500 in the UK every year

It’s just a lot of effort for that car.

Everyone is thinking about going back to the canvas hoods, because the Audi A3 and the A5 is fantastic.

It’s cheap, it works and you don’t have the load-space issues.

I think everyone rushed down the metal roof route.

Q: At the beginning of the year, Vauxhall topped the sales charts in the UK, but is that mostly due to fleet sales, or have you been concentrating more on retail?

SH: The retail market has fallen, but our proportion has remained static, which is good.

At the back end of this year, it is going to decline because we haven’t got enough scrappage cars and the Ford Fiesta and is really hurting the Corsa.

What we won’t do though, as we’ve done in years gone by, is fill the hole with fleet sales, because the cost of doing that is so great now.

We’d rather just give it up.

I mean take the BSM (British School of Motoring) deal with Fiat for example.

For some bizarre reason Fiat decided to take on the contract and they’ve ruined their residuals for the 500, which was a remarkably strong car in that area.

Q: Okay, so that’s why you’re going more retail with the new Astra?

SH: We’re trying to.

That’s where we’re pitching it.

Q: Is it true that you’ve got a £35 road tax allowance with the new Astra?

SH: Yes and it’ll get lower in the very near future.

Q: Is that because of the ‘eco-netic’ thing?

SH: Everybody is putting a lot of money in the Co2 side of things and BMW has been a leader in this area for years; they’ve spent a lot of money on green technology.

The bucked the trend of all the German manufacturers, because in Germany they haven’t got a Co2 tax until January 2010, so they never bothered and that made it very difficult for the rest of us.

Five-speed transmissions for instance.

Everybody thinks you want a six-speed because of the better gearing, but a five-speed transmission is more efficient.

Q: I noticed that you’re pushing the Astra’s green credentials.

SH: Everyone’s pushing it and we’re there with them.

Of course, what this is setting up for, is the Government to reconfigure the VED banding.

You can see it’s going to happen if Brown or whoever gets elected next.

If you look as what manufacturers are doing now, a lot of them are going to have no VED cars, which can’t help the old coppers.

Q: Well thank you for speaking to me today.

SH: No problem, take care.

If you want to learn more about the new Vauxhall Astra, check out Vauxhall's new hub www.torqueastra.com.