Vauxhall Astra review - Reliability & safety

In recent years, Vauxhall has languished near the bottom of our Driver Power surveys, with the low purchase prices soon being outweighed by a less-than-perfect ownership experience. The latest Vauxhall Astra is too new to have featured properly in our 2023 edition, however, the brand has seen some modest improvement overall.

Vauxhall Astra reliability

As a brand, Vauxhall climbed to 19th place out of 29 in 2022, but dropped back to 24th out of 32 brands in 2023’s Driver Power results. This positions the British brand just behind rival SEAT, yet ahead of even some premium marques like Mercedes and Audi. Customers liked the running costs of their cars and were happy enough with phone connectivity, but rear-seat legroom and the driving experience weren’t rated too highly.

In our run-down of the best-rated cars on sale, the outgoing Mk7 Astra placed a reasonable 54th for an ageing car, which was actually an improvement on 2022. Owners praised its value for money and safety features, but while it performed less well in other areas, the new model is significantly improved, so should fare better when it features.

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Safety

The latest Vauxhall Astra can’t quite keep pace with the class leaders when it comes to safety, because Euro NCAP gave it four stars out of five in recent crash tests, matching the scores it gave to the Vauxhall Mokka and Vauxhall Corsa. However, it’s worth noting it faced stricter testing than the five-star Ford Focus and Volkswagen Golf, because Euro NCAP testing gets tougher every two years. Chest protection was said to be comparatively poor, while safety technology is claimed not to be as extensive as some similar cars. However, its overall scores of 80% and 82% for adult and child occupant protection respectively are perfectly decent.

Standard safety equipment varies depending on the trim level you choose. Design includes lane-departure warning, autonomous emergency braking, speed sign recognition and hill-start assist. GS adds traffic-sign recognition and a forward collision alert system that works at any speed (the system fitted to Design only works at low speeds). Top-spec Ultimate features lane-positioning and lane-change assist, plus blind-spot monitoring, intelligent speed adaptation and a 360-degree parking camera.