It's a tough business building everyday cars, especially where the customers are of the family and fleet variety. They are looking for a bit of glamour and excitement. and at an affordable price too.
Sometimes the manufacturers get it more than a bit right, sometimes they don't. Take Ford's Mondeo for instance. By common agreement, it's a superbly engineered car with the best chassis dynamics in the class. But maybe these days styling is a problem: it just doesn't look fresh any more even with a recent modest facelift.
Opel's standard-bearer here, the Vectra, never quite matched the Mondeo for ride and handling and general driving comportment. There were outward and visible signs also that this Vectra generation, half way into its life needed some serious freshening up.
Now Opel has addressed both problems with a new-look model range that seems more than a ritual mid-life facelift, along with a much more inspiring driving feel from major under-the-metal revisions.
We drove the much smarter Vectra recently on some back roads in rural England, and then a week ago as our road test subject, on varying Irish terrain.
The road test model would probably not be the fare of most normal (or every day) Vectra users: a 1.9 litre 150 bhp CDTi hatch with the SRi designation and a retail price of €34,100. Entry-level Vectras with 1.6 and 1.8 litre petrol engines, by contrast, come in at €24,800 and €25,800 in saloon form. That said, there's a common identity in the driving and the looks. Taking the latter first, the Vectra's new design language may not cause audible gasping in the car parks but it's still highly commendable and appealing.
Noticeable features are a crease in the engine hood, sharper tapering of the front bumper and, most of all as the jewellery in the crown, bigger eye-catching headlamps that have chrome-coloured lamp units behind rear glass. Headlamps used to be such plain functional objects, square or round. Now they are the designers' dream area.
Inside, in the "living room" it's all change as well, with Opel claiming that the cockpit makes "a lighter, more elegant impression". We are told that the top sections of the instrument panel and doors trim have a new leather-look grain. It never struck us as remotely like leather, even faked, but the impression is still of great improvement on what went before. Probably the most endearing change is the sporty-feel three-spoke steering wheel.
As for the driving, our test car set a vibrant pace but that's what we expected anyway with the 1.9 litre turbodiesel, known in Fiat parlance as Multijet and progeny of an unhappy General Motors and Fiat alliance.
It happens to be one of the best diesels around these days doing service with Saab, Alfa Romeo and Fiat as well as Opel. The official performance figures exemplify some of its lusty nature, a top speed of 217 km/h and getting from zero to 100 km/h in 9.8 seconds.
There's actually a more alluring statistic, that for the fuel consumption. We reckon it was around or above five litres per 100 kilometres, or in old fashioned imperial language, about 40 miles to the gallon.
The Vectra's exceptional frugality was best demonstrated on a 800 kilometre plus weekend run from Dublin to Malin Head in Donegal and back. The needle on the fuel gauge was beautifully stubborn, staying at Full almost until we crossed the boundary into Donegal. Back in Dublin and our mission to the northern outpost completed, it was still registering half full.
It's the mark of thoroughly modern common rail diesels these days to offer a judicious blend of performance and economy, but we were still greatly taken with this Vectra's feat. The driving was vigorous and normal and we consumed two biggish 100km chunks of the M1 motorway at a steady (and legal) 120 kph.
Another car company we know promotes the needle as the slowest moving part. This Vectra 1.9 diesel is, however, our champion slow-mover in the league of fuel needles.
Opel's basket of improvements includes more sensitive tuning of the front and rear suspension as well as better steering feel and finer straight-line stability.
Sit into and drive a British or Irish right-hand drive Vectra, however, and there's more tweaking. It's all apparently because British and Irish roads are adjudged that bit different - or deficient - compared with the more manicured highways of mainland Europe.
"We are the first company to make the distinction through new suspension settings," a Vauxhall engineer explained at the British test drive. "There's more ride comfort now."
When the going gets rough then, Vectra should be more composed in its road behaviour, better able to iron out stressful surfaces. Our 1.9 turbodiesel felt convincing enough in the wilds of Inishowen in north Donegal, and also nicely compliant with steering twists and turns. Is it a match for its major class competitor, the aforementioned Mondeo? Probably not for purists, but there's damned little in the difference.
A six-speed manual transmission is the norm in the 1.9 turbodiesel, promoting that excellent fuel economy and spreading a wide and useful bank of torque or power across the gears. Entry-level 1.6 and 1.8 petrol cars make do with just five forward gears, which means most of the Irish customer base.
If space is the thing, then the five-door hatch shouldn't be found wanting. The trunk area can go from 500 to 1,360 litres compared to a 1,050 litre maximum on the saloon. That's with the rear seats folded forward.
Not relevant to our test car, but worth mentioning is a clever bit of faking on some lower priced Vectras. They have steel wheels with plastic covers that look like alloys. No need to worry if they get scuffed because the cover can be replaced for a negligible amount of euro. An alloy by contrast is a three figure sum these days.
This, then, is the Vectra that isn't showing its middle age: the treatment above and below the surface clearly has given it a new lease of life. Our 1.9 turbodiesel SRi with a bias towards handling rather than comfort will not admittedly be a volume seller with a price tag of €34,100.
That's roughly in the price territory of the BMW 118, for instance, but it's the Opel with the every man and every day badge that wins us over, especially with a delectable combination that is sporty form and pump shy.