What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

Gary the ram raider cracks Fermat’s last theorem ^{Vauxhall Astra VXR 2.0i Turbo}

It’s known that people first moved to the Blackbird Leys region of what became known as Oxford about 5,300 years ago. Nothing much happened until 2,000 years later, when it’s thought that someone built a circular eco-house there and someone else made a loom.

Then nothing happened again until 1991, when the younger male residents invented a new sport. They would go into wealthier areas of the region, steal a car and use it to whizz about their own estates, doing skids.

Soon news crews from all over the world were turning up to film these young men bouncing off postboxes and lampposts in front of a cheering crowd. And if the police tried to stop the mayhem, the crowd would express its displeasure by throwing stones and making cow-like lowing noises. This would cause even more film crews to turn up. Which would cause even more attention-seeking young men to steal even more cars.

The craze soon spread, and within months young men from council estates all over the land began to spend their evenings driving other people’s cars around branches of Dixons and Woolworths. For a while, doing a handbrake turn in an Arndale centre was more popular than football.

Eventually, of course, the craze died down and the young men of Blackbird Leys went back to doing what they’d done for thousands of years: sitting in bus shelters chewing gum, mostly.

But they did leave two legacies. No 1: cars could no longer be stolen using a lollipop stick and a bent coathanger. And No 2: they killed off the hot hatchback.

Devised in the mid-Seventies, the recipe was very simple. You took a normal, easy-to-park, easy-to-mend family hatchback, and under the bonnet you fitted a biggish engine. It proved to be immensely popular, to the point that in the mid-Eighties 15 per cent of all Ford Escorts sold in Britain were hotted-up XR3is and 20 per cent of all Volkswagen Golfs were GTIs.

Cars such as this were classless. They were driven by Hoorays in Fulham and school-run mums in Castle Bromwich. I know someone who traded his Gordon-Keeble for a Golf GTI. They were ageless, too, and were just as popular with teenagers as they were with the elderly.

But after the ram raiders and the Twockers and that newsreel footage of Gary hooning around Blackbird Leys in someone else’s turbocharged MG Maestro, the hot hatch became a byword for yobbery. A Burberry-badged back-to-front baseball cap with windscreen wipers and an out-of-date tax disc.

Now. If I were running a car firm, I’d want people back in hot hatchbacks as soon as possible because they are extremely profitable. I’d therefore be doing everything in my power to shake off the yob tag, in the same way that Stella Artois tries to shake off its wife-beater image by banging on about how it uses only hops that can speak Latin and zesty mountain spring water.

But no. Every hot Ford is festooned with trinketry that would not look out of place on Wayne and Coleen’s mantelpiece. And each is painted in lime green or vivid blue or matt black. They’re as subtle as being attacked by a shark while off your head on acid.

Renault is equally childish. Hot versions of the Mégane and the Clio look as if they’ve been lifted straight from a school playground. ‘Look at me,’ they seem to be saying. ‘I have a mental age of nine.’

And then we get to the subject of this morning’s review. The new Vauxhall Astra VXR, which was sent around to my house sporting an optional rear wing that would be dismissed by an Asian drifting champion as being a bit over the top and massive Fisher-Price 20-inch wheels.

Even if you don’t specify these extras, it still has more jewellery and more tinsel than P Diddy at a rap convention. It’s a car that conveys one simple message to other road users. And the message is this: ‘I am extremely unintelligent.’

It’s annoying, because, beneath the flotsam and jetsam, this is not just a very pretty car but also quite a clever one.

Because the turbocharged 2-litre engine develops a whopping 276 brake horsepower, making this by some margin the most powerful car in its class, much out-of-sight work has been done to ensure the front wheels don’t just fall off every time you put your foot down.

Up front, it’s fitted with what Vauxhall calls HiPerStrut suspension, which is designed to optimize camber during cornering and cut torque steer, and, as a further measure, a proper mechanical differential is added. Ford used pretty much the same setup on its most recent Focus RS.

But Vauxhall goes even further because the VXR comes with an adaptive ride and ‘floating’ front brake discs designed to reduce unsprung weight. Make no mistake: the underside of this car has been created by someone who was concentrating, and funded by a company that plainly wants to lay the ghost of the Vectra to rest and be taken seriously.

I shall oblige. The VXR is very, very good. It goes like a scalded cock, stops with an almost cartoonish suddenness and corners with absolutely no drama at all. It isn’t quite as thrilling as a hot Mégane – it’s much heavier – but what you lose in Stowe Corner, you gain on all the other days of the year because the ride comfort is exceptional. Even though the tyres have the profile of paint, this is a car that just glides over bumps.

There is a Sport button that firms up the suspension, and a so-called VXR button that adjusts the throttle response, adds weight to the hydraulic power steering, gives even harder suspension and makes all the dials glow red. But I don’t recommend you ever use either. Because mainly what they do is add 10 per cent to the dynamism and take away 100 per cent of the comfort.

There are a few little niggles. Despite Vauxhall’s best efforts, the wheel does still writhe about under harsh acceleration, and there is rather more turbo lag than I’d like.

Inside, it was the driving position that annoyed me most of all. After a while, I got cramp. And who thought it would be a good idea to fit a centre armrest that prevents the taller driver from selecting second, fourth and sixth? Also the front wheels weren’t balanced properly. Grrrr.

Oh, and then there was the boot lid that wouldn’t open. I’m sure there’s a clever button hidden away somewhere, but finding it would have meant reading the handbook. And I can’t do that because I’m a man.

None of these things, however, should prevent you from buying what is a well-engineered and well-executed car. But what might cause you to think twice is the bovine trinketry, the high price and the fact you have to tell people at parties that you’ve bought a Vauxhall Astra.

If these things are too much of a cross to bear, it’s not the end of the world. Because, happily, Volkswagen can still sell you a hot hatch that doesn’t make you look a gormless plonker. It’s not as stupendous as the Astra. But it’s not as stupid. It’s called the Golf GTI.