An 1998 Opel Astra 1.6 16v which is quite special to me…why?
I’ve been driven this car for over 12 years now and it never let me down, it has done more than 342.000km, i’ve towed way to huge trailers with it, loaded 6 passengers aboard, visited 13 countries in it, in the time I had i’ve moved 4 times and found out that you can fit: a double bed, a huge freezer, a washing machine and loads of other kinds of junk in it. On the other hand I drove it several times over the Zandvoort and Nurburgring circuit. Last week I drove up and down to Danmark for a fishing trip…you can have any opinion on Opel cars but this specific one is up to almost anything. When you drive it you don’t get the feeling you’re driving an old or worn out car. The ony downside…the paint has seen better days but i’m planning to do something about that.
I’ve done somethings overtime to make it my own.
I’ve fitted 17 inch wheel, lowered the suspension 35mm with a Koni sport kit, installed a new audio install just for better sound quality and fitted a duplex stainless-steel exhaust which gives it a nice deep but distinguished sound. (no-ricer bs going on)
Wow, that car looks nice for how well-traveled it is! If it keeps driving as good as you say after that many miles, I’d say you hit the jackpot in the car lottery. You’ve certainly gotten the life out of it already!
Thanks! The main thing these days is to keep it rust free. Because of the popularity (nr1 sold car in the late 90’s, early 00’s in NL) and age of the car it’s easy to get parts at scrap yards these days so it’s cheap to run. They are also quite simple to work on. It has a lot of modern day features but the mechanics are quite basic. So even if the engine fails you can find a got new one with little miles/km’s on it for only a few hundred euro’s.
It looks like a nice clean car, I’m usually not a fan of aftermarket wheels as they usually look quite ricey, with the exception of some expensive examples, but those wheels look quite nice on the car, I like it.
I don’t like after market wheels either but when i saw these I had to have them…Opel was driving these kind of Astra’s in the DTM so they seem to fit.
With all i’ve changed to the car, I kept in mind that I wanted to make it an overall better car, so when I ordered the wheels for example I chose the same rimwidth and diameter as the OPC had in those days and fitted it with the same tires. Why choose when a sports department of Opel with milions and to spend and the use of a test track already figured out what’s best…the rest of the part are all factory/OEM parts of the Coupé and OPC versions, the suspension is aftermarket from Koni, but hey, they supplied F1 teams back then so I think that was a safe choice as well
