Speaking of the exhaust system, it is surprisingly loud when the car is cold, probably a trick from engineers who adjusted idle rpms right at a resonance frequency. Things get quieter after a minute or so, but that’s plenty of time for neighbors to stick their neck out of the window and yell a few colorful insults, something you may have to get used to with such a car.  This Astra OPC really looks the part, a real esthetic achievement, especially when admired from the side. Undoubtedly a strong selling point. Side skirts, aggressive fascia and rear bumper design, roof spoiler, oversized alloys and the sound presence to match, everything in this car is designed for maximum attention. And that’s a good thing ! If one can’t see, better that others do their part. When I wrote the GTC review, I already complained about the visibility impairment brought by these large A-pillars, but with the OPC, within a week of city driving, I almost “scored” three strikes for a total of five innocent pedestrians. Yet another opportunity for a fresh harvest of insults.

Speaking of city driving, the official spec sheet claims 189g of CO2 per km and an urban gas mileage of 10.8L/100km. Hmmm, yes, but that has to be the freeway fuel economy. Cruising at 120 km/h, I will at best see 10L/100km, climbing to 16L/100km in congested city commutes, in spite of the Eco mode which enables the Stop/Start feature. This system becomes active as soon as water temperature has reached 70 to 75 degC, well before the 90 degC optimal. I also noticed occasional disparities between the analog and digital indicators, for instance a reading of the instrument display at 82 while the analog needle showed 90 degrees. Overall, we computed 11.3 L/100km during our 1522km test.

I regret that the Astra OPC does not share critical vehicle information such as oil temperature or turbo boost, whether in the instrument cluster or on the multimedia/satnav display. Spirited drivers find these information useful, but, sign of the times, they are only available through a smartphone and the OPC Power App (available on iTunes, an Android version is announced for 2013). The app scans the data flowing through the CAN bus and gives access to over 60 parameters.

On the GTC version, three driving modes were available. Normal, Tour (softer damping settings and laggier throttle response) and Sport, with clear differences. On this OPC, we have standard, hard (Sport) or even harder (OPC), and far more responsive, obviously. Other than for showing off, using the OPC mode on a bumpy freeway will become unbearably bumpy after 5km, as the Astra bounces on the smallest bumps like a pebble at the surface of a lake. In normal conditions, the standard setting is a safe choice, filtering most irregularities. For more committed driving, switching to Sport or OPC is recommended to give the OPC a composure that the GTC never exhibited.