You trundle along through your daily activities — drive to work, drive home, drive to gym, drive home — and you never really consider how much time you spend behind the steering wheel of your car.
That is until you find a vehicle that’s not completely manic in nature, but stirs the senses enough to make you realise that it’s not about getting from Point A to Point B anymore. Because, if you live in South Africa, particularly in Jo’burg, then you’re bound to spend a great deal of time stuck in traffic. So when you happen to come across a vehicle that makes you feel slightly more alive, then you begin to understand why people spend so much money on their cars.
Sure, sometimes they’re poseurs, wanting to pick up nubile, young things to forget that they need Viagra to get excited about a person, but sometimes they’re just people trying to make the best of being stuck in the rat race.
The Opel Astra OPC has that sort of liberating effect on a person. It makes you feel that, while life can be ho-hum, there are some things that still make you tingle all over.
Generally, I don’t like performance vehicles that give you enormous amounts of vooma without much else. It’s much like guys who have watched Gone in 60 Seconds and want nothing but the engine from the fastest car.
A powerful engine is great but, if you don’t have the dynamics and roadholding to match, then it’s quite pointless — all you”ll do is wrap yourself around a pole that much sooner.
The OPC is a difficult vehicle. The suspension is rock hard and it has so much torque steer that keeping it on the straight and narrow on high-revving take-offs will give you Hulk-like biceps.
The torque-steer prevented me from pushing the OPC to its limit, but it didn’t stop me from having a great deal of fun. Of course, when you do take off with a little enthusiasm from a set of traffic lights and manage to keep it in a straight line, you look in your rear-view mirror and it looks like everyone behind you is looking for parking (that is: they aren’t driving overly eager, hot hatches).
The OPC’s road-holding was pretty impressive and its overall characteristics were enough to make me understand why some people are so passionate about performance Opels.
The interior is comfortable and roomy and the OPC comes equipped with six airbags, multi-function steering, ABS, EBD and loads more.
Most importantly, the OPC lives up to its boy-racer reputation. I eventually lost count of how many occasions I stopped the car at a set of traffic lights only to hear the men beside me gasping with a mixture of envy and pleasure.
Fact file
Model: Opel Astra OPC
Price: R267 080
Engine: 2,0-litre turbo-charged
Tech: 177kw, 320Nm
Top Speed: 244kph, 0-100kph in 6,4s
Tank: 52 litres
Services: 15 000km