holy ****, this thing shifted big style.

he said it makes slightly above 300Hp between 3.5k and 5.5k with nearly 400Ibft torque. i 100% agree. it felt massively quicker than my old stage 2+ vRS, much quicker than the 6MPS i test drove. 4th gear was absolutely savage.

As for the handling, after reading the reviews from top gear and that footage of the Vectra suffering horrendous understeer, i completely disagree. considering it was running on standard suspension it handled really well. Really surprised me, i was honestly ready to rip it.

according to the guy, the TG team disconnected fuses on the VXR to disable the traction control, but this also disabled the electronic dampers or something hence the shocking handling.

lit the inside wheel on a few corners, no doubt it would be worse in the wet, but i reckon an LSD and this car could be very good indeed. V6 turbo engine sounded very good as well. id love to try one of these with a TBE, and intercooler. it would sound ace and go like **** off a shovel then

but its a vauxhall, with half of halfords attached to it...............

i like the look of thesen actually, i bet it did shift with all that torque! although i guess it looks like it should have a lot of power with all that plastic attached to it

this was in black though, so it didnt look as garish as the blue ones do

Was it an early one or a late one?

IIRC they "tweaked" the later ones to have better suspension setup and a tidge more power too.

The early ones had around 260ish bhp, whilst the 07-08 ones had 280

Was it an early one or a late one?

IIRC they "tweaked" the later ones to have better suspension setup and a tidge more power too.

The early ones had around 260ish bhp, whilst the 07-08 ones had 280

he said it was the 280 model with a thorney motorsport stage 1 map. ive just been looking on the VXR forums, and looks like the 280models are good for about 350hp.

id honestly say that this had much easier/predictable and dare i say it better handling than the Astra VXRs ive driven.

i expected to hate this car, but i actually didint mind it. wasnt to keen on the dash, very plain, steering also a little underweighted just like the ST220.

Edited 11 September, 201015 yr by janner_Sy

brother's girlfriend has a 2002 GSI (so a 3.2 NA V6 rather than the turbo V6) but that's never had an issue going around corners either. looks wise, I didn't think the vxr was massively different to other vectras of a similar age

I actually worked for Vauxhall for a few months at one point and we had an estate VXR as a demo, I really enjoyed driving it!