It’s not pretty, but it sounds urgent. The gearshifter is a big, slightly awkward oblong shape (although nowhere near as bad as the old Astra VXR’s) and the shift doesn’t require much ...

The secret of great comedy is timing, so it should come as no surprise that the arrival of Triple Eight Engineering’s Astra VXR at the evo office in the first week of December raised a laugh or two.

Vauxhall fits its expensive HiPerStrut front suspension to all Astra GTC. This is proper engineering: it gives the car a well-honed feel because it allows lots of drive to be channelled through the ...