Wednesday 3rd March 2010

By way of a concluding comment on the all-new Vauxhall Astra I want to make mention of my conversation with Mark Adams – the man heading up the Vauxhall design team. Having been responsible for the Vauxhall Insignia winning European Car of the Year in 2009, this car - the sixth generation of the Vauxhall Astra in 30 years – could well have been that difficult second album.

If it was, that seems to have passed him by – because the critics seem pretty unanimous in their verdict that Vauxhall is currently on a winning streak when it comes to design. By taking the most successful features found in the Vauxhall Insignia and evolving them for the Astra market, Adams and his team have found a way to bring serious design and innovation to a sector that has previously largely been denied it. It is not easy to win design awards these days, when so many companies are investing in design on a superficial level and real innovation seems ever more elusive. But Vauxhall has a team that is demonstrating a serious dedication and passion to its craft – no compromising and no shortcuts. It’s inspiring to find this in a car marque, and more so to find it in a brand with as much potential to make a difference on a human level as Vauxhall has.

The Astra is, for many people, their first car – and it’s likely, if they buy this model, that their expectations from their own set of wheels will forever be a little higher than they might otherwise. It’s not unlike the division between the Mac and PC market when Jonathan Ive took the reigns as the head of design: once people appreciate the attention to detail in the hardware they are using they begin to expect it. And then there’s no going back.