Vauxhall Astra hatchback - 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 2022 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, following a worrying 28th-place result in 2020. This positions the British brand just behind rival Volkswagen, yet ahead of even some premium marques like Mercedes. 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 Astra placed a disappointing 64th. Owners criticised nearly every aspect of the car, however the new model is completely new, with significant improvement in all areas, so should fare better when it eventually 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. Chest protection was said to be comparatively poor, while the 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 Line 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 - although this is coming in summer 2022 - and a 360-degree parking camera.