Opel Problems

The Opel story in Australia is a weird one involving problematic range of cars and a completely indifferent car-buying cohort. It's little wonder the brand packed up and disappeared from this country after only about a year. The real mystery is why Opel ever bothered when it had already been established that Aussies didn't want the product even with a Holden badge on it. The point in 2023 being, of course, that the brand and its cars are now orphans that nobody really wanted new nor wants now they're second-hand.

Which is another way of saying that your car won't be worth much, and that low value might convince you to cut your losses and get out now before anything else expensive goes wrong. At current values, you might be able to sell the car for around $8000 to $10,000, but only after you've fixed the current turbocharger problem (if that's what it is).

Even so, that could be the wise way to go. That's because these cars had pretty terrible reliability records. They didn't seem to agree with Australian levels of heat, and the list of problems they tend to suffer is a long one. It's hard to imagine the bugs would ever truly be ironed out and sticking with the Astra might mean you're forever chasing problems.

I have a question for you, David: Is the car a private import form Britain? I ask because you’ve quoted the distance covered in miles and the Opel Astra wasn’t sold in Australia until September 2012, while you say the car in question is a 2011 model.

In any case, the Astra we got in 2012 was an interesting car and one that drove pretty well, but it wasn’t really suited to Australian conditions. Plenty of them suffered failures of the water pump which, in our climate, soon led to overheating engines. The 1.4-litre turbocharged petrol engine was also a bit underdone power-wise and the turbo system could develop leaks. There was also a big problem with manual transmission failures, the first sign of which is a whining noise coming form the gearbox. Oh, and the car was also involved in the Takata air-bag fiasco.

The whole idea of introducing the Opel brand to Australia turned out to be a huge flop for General Motors and the whole thing crashed and burned after just a little over 12 months.

The combined fuel consumption quoted on the label on your windscreen is not a real-life figure, it’s the result of a laboratory test, and the aim of it its to provide the buyer with a figure they can use to compare one car with another. The bottom line is that it doesn’t necessarily affect the consumption you might get in real life driving. But I would expect the real life fuel consumption to be closer to the claimed figure than yours appears to be. There are many factors that can affect fuel consumption, ranging from tyre pressures, extra load in the boot, roof racks, driving style etc. I would ask the dealer to demonstrate to you that the car’s fuel consumption is normal, as they claim it is.