The Sports Tourer, which will be premiered at this year’s Mondial de l’Automobile in Paris, will be the second model to join the New Astra range, which has now sold over 28,000 units in the UK (to end of May 2010) since its launch last December, and has helped the Astra become Britain’s best-selling retail range in the first five months of this year.
Combining high levels of practicality, clothed in a typically sleek and rakish body from Brit Mark Adams’ design team, the Sports Tourer is available to order now and will arrive in UK showrooms at the end of October 2010.
Illustrating the depth of Vauxhall’s engineering and manufacturing excellence in the UK, the Sports Tourer will be assembled solely at Vauxhall’s Ellesmere Port plant in Cheshire, while its new upper-body structure has been 100 per cent engineered at Vauxhall Engineering Centre in Bedfordshire. And, like the recently launched Astra Sport Hatch, the Sports Tourer will feature key dynamic elements tuned for UK roads.
Packed with clever features, the Astra Sports Tourer maintains the hatch’s wheelbase (2685mm), yet its superior packaging has allowed the maximum load length to be increased by 28mm to 1,835mm, and its load volume by 30 litres to *500 litres with the rear seats up.
As well as boasting a cargo area with flat wall linings to fully optimise available space, a new FlexFold feature (standard or optional depending on trim level) allows each section of the 60:40 split-fold rear seatbacks to be lowered at the press of a button housed in the walls of the cargo compartment. In addition, with the rear seat cushions folded up against the front seat-backs, the Sports Tourer has a completely flat load floor and a maximum load capacity of up to **1550 litres. A further new addition is the Easy-Access Cargo Cover which effortlessly slides upwards and away at the touch of a button.
* With delete space saver spare wheel option.
** With rear seat cushion removed and delete space saver spare wheel option.
World premiere: British-built Astra Sports Tourer