Snubbed for so long, the SUV has well and truly taken hold, but the Antara offers little new to an already saturated market, writes Michael McAleer, Motoring Editor.
We Europeans have a history of looking down our noses at what we see as the uncouth, uncultured Americans. While we don't like it when Ethiopians remind us that we were still crawling on all fours when they had a civilisation, we do like to revel in the fact that we perceive Americans as thinking of the early 1800s as akin to the Stone Age.
Yet, for all our historic snobbery, we continue to follow their lead in everything from popular culture to the modern car.
In recent years, we revelled in taking the moral high ground as they rushed to buy enormous trucks while we carried on driving in our small family hatchbacks. They were small-minded egocentrics with little idea of the world around them or the environment, we scoffed.
However, our spot on the moral high ground looks decidedly shaky now. For a start, the Americans are turning towards smaller cars. Japanese firms are recording significant growth in small car sales over there, hybrids are flying out of showrooms. The boom in truck sales is starting to peter out.
It now seems our loyalty to the family hatchback market was not based on the strong foundations of environmental consciousness: we simply couldn't afford the €60,000-plus price tag on the bigger SUVs.
Now that mainstream marques are churning out better-priced soft-roaders, it's out with the little family car, and up and away with the high-set chunky SUV.
The public and private personas of the European - and Irish - are heading back to their traditional double standard best.
You can't blame the car firms for this. They simply work in a supply and demand market and, in fairness, they've been trying to reduce the environmental impact of their products for some time.
However, if the market demands soft-roaders, then European brands can't ignore the clamour. After all, others are already happy to fill the gap if they don't.
The Antara is just another addition to a long line of suburban soft-roaders to hit the market in the past 12 months. And there's a lot more to come. Even the French - long-time cynics of the SUV craze - are getting in on the act these days.
As with many of the other entrants in this market, it's hard to get too excited about the Antara. It looks rugged and muscular like the rest, is set pretty high off the ground and comes relatively well equipped for comfortable town driving. If meaty and muscular suburban motoring is your want, then the Antara fits the bill as well as any of its "rugged-lite" rivals.
The exterior suggests off-road ability, but the interior is just what the suburban family motorist requires, comfortable seats, all mod-cons and some sensible trim levels to rival the regular family saloon. However, it lacks the seven-seat option of its General Motors sibling, the Captiva, with which it shares most of its internal parts.
There are several "sports" styling touches, such as the side fins on the Design version we drove. These are purely aesthetic: there to suggest some real sporting menace from the under the bonnet. In reality, you get a choice of Opel's revamped 2-litre diesel engine or a 2.4-litre petrol unit. The diesel puts out a very respectable 150bhp and 320Nm of pulling power - or torque - that is more than capable of pushing the Antara's 1.8 tonnes of metal around. Compare that to the 140bhp and 220Nm of the larger petrol engine and it's clear the 2.4-litre is a rather pointless addition to the range.
The diesel is not as refined as we would have liked, particularly when starting from cold or pulling away in a low gear, but get it up to motorway speeds and there's little complaint. In fact, in mid-range gears it's quite nippy, particularly for its size.
The ride is also well cushioned, with the diesel getting self-levelling rear suspension to the normal independent multilink set-up. It's not going to win over any of the hot hatch brigade, but it's competent nonetheless, as is the handling, though we found the extra large steering wheel a bit of overkill. You're not driving a bus, after all.
All Antaras come with an on-demand four-wheel-drive system as standard. That means it's mostly a front-wheel-drive vehicle unless traction is lost up front, in which case, power is sent to the rear.
Given that this is likely to occur once every six years for the suburban owners of Antaras, it's a little annoying that you can't opt for two-wheel-drive with this Opel, as you can with the car's sibling twin within the General Motors range, the Chevrolet Antara. That would save money, weight, fuel and cut emissions. The only downside we can see is that you won't be able to boast about off-road ability as loudly down the golf club.
This situation epitomises one of our greatest problems with SUVs: it comes equipped with a relatively expensive, heavy, and over-engineered off-road system on a vehicle that will hardly ever leave tarmac. Whatever about wasting the money of its owners, it also means the vehicle will consume more fuel and emit more pollutants.
However, the real problem we had with the Antara was the gearbox.
The five-speed manual transmission on this Opel is one of the greatest instigators of foul language to feature in modern motoring. Far from simply being awkward to change, this transmission was downright unco-operative.
There seemed to be a motoring equivalent of the cold war going on between clutch and gear cogs, with communications often breaking down entirely. At its very best, it was clunky to change and the long throws are imprecise. And that's before we get on to the ratios that will have you roaring the engine revs in first gear and barely pulling away in second.
When you go to the bother of re-engineering your diesel engines - as General Motors has - you should make sure the transmission team gets in on the act, to avoid wasted effort.
Cruising in fifth gear is fine but anything below that proved a pain. An automatic transmission is optional on the diesel version, but for us, it's the only sensible choice. We tested that model some months ago and it is a world apart from this mealy manual.
Further down our list of frustrations were the control stalks on the steering column. Opel got these terribly wrong on the Vectra, where they were far too spongy, and had owners signalling as if they were practising morse code.
Things dramatically improved with the Astra, and Opel got it perfected with the Corsa. Alas, the leftover parts bin from the Vectra production line seems to have been raided for Antara.
While not as bad as on the Vectra, they're still too spongy for our taste and liable to drive the odd owner towards steering wheel banging rage. Of the steering wheel itself, while there are the usual array of features on the Design version, the wheel itself seems inordinately large.
Undoubtedly our annoyance with the transmission tarnished what otherwise would have been a pretty regular week with another suburban SUV. For us, we would rather have the Vectra Estate with its larger bootspace. You can get a top of the range version of this estate for nearly €5,000 less than this Antara.
As a relative newcomer, though it does technically replace the long departed Frontera, this Opel SUV will do well among those loyal to the brand.
It does exactly the same as every other soft-roader, with slight hints of off-road ability. Where it falls down is that it features four-wheel-drive as standard in a market where that's not really worth the money.
It also strangely lacks the option of seven seats - something Opel has been so good at with the Zafira - and is priced within sight of some serious off-road rivals, not least the Land Rover Freelander 2.2 TD4 S diesel at €45,995.
The competition is intense in this segment these days, the quality of the offerings has rapidly improved in recent years and it takes something exceptional to stand out in this crowd. The Antara mixes it with the rest but the Freelander still has the edge, in our opinion, certainly at this price.
As for the popularity of such vehicles, perhaps it's the perfect statement about our society: we're not that socially conscious after all, but merely envious onlookers, happy to snipe in public, but quick to copy in private.
Factfile
ENGINE:A 1991cc four-cylinder 16 valve turbocharged common-rail diesel engine putting out 150bhp @ 4,000rpm and 320Nm of torque @ 2,000rpm
SPECIFICATIONS:Standard features on the design specification version includes: ESP with traction control; hill descent; front, side and curtain airbags; electronic climate control; heated front seats; cruise control; 18-inch alloys; chrome-effect exhaust tailpipe; auto lights; rain-sensitive wipers; intelligent four-wheel-drive; steering wheel mounted audio controls; roof rails.
Options include metallic paint for €584
L/100KM(MPG)
Urban: 8.7 (32.5)
Extra-urban: 6.8 (41.5)
Combined: 7.6 (37.2)
CO2 EMISSIONS:198g/km
ANNUAL ROAD TAX:€539
PRICE:€44,645 (€37,350 to €52,645)