The reason for discussing this particular Astra GTC rather than any of the others is that it's one of the first cars to be fitted with a new 1.6-litre turbo petrol engine which, at full chat, produces 200PS, or 197bhp as we loyal subjects of Her Majesty prefer to describe it.There's a case for saying that this is the most powerful engine in the three-door range. The Astra VXR has a lot more grunt, but although it uses the same bodyshell it's not officially described as a GTC. If you feel that this technical point excludes it from the discussion, the car tested here is the hottest Astra coupe there is.The conventional figures - 143mph flat out, 0-60mph in 7.3 seconds - show that it doesn't hang about. What they don't express is how accessible the power is. At 2000rpm the engine can already produce 79bhp, and the full 197bhp is available at just 4000rpm. You can make very good progress in quite a relaxed manner, and crisp overtaking is possible without jumping down several gears and sending the revs soaring.You might expect the car to be quite economical for these reasons. In fact, I averaged about 32mpg, ten short of the official combined figure. But when I got climbed aboard this one, it had just 345 miles on the clock and the engine must have been fairly tight. I imagine that a higher-mileage example would use less fuel.Mind you, the test car was a lot more, shall we say, experienced by the time I'd finished with it. I drove for more than 700 miles through three countries in fourteen hours on everything from motorways to winding mountain roads. In some other cars I'd have had to stop so often I'd still be on the journey now, but the Astra was perfectly comfortable to sit in.Not so much to drive, though. It shows every sign of having been set up to run exclusively on smooth German tarmac. In Switzerland, France and southern England the front end felt terribly under-damped, so the car made too much of a meal of really quite gentle bumps and was rarely happy with even moderately purposeful applications of power.Since this is the hot hatch of the GTC range (excluding the VXR for the reasons given above) it really needs some work done on the front suspension to become as good as it could be.For its £21,945 price, the Limited Edition is decently equipped, with rather sexy 20" wheels, a bit of body styling, digital radio, air-conditioning, cruise control, USB and aux-in connections and tinted rear windows.A further £1200 gets you the Navi 950 Intellilink system, which is generally pretty good, though the satnav has trouble with French names when it has been set to give instructions in English (see this rambling article for more details) and at one point it gave me route guidance which, as a friend later pointed out, wasn't nearly as efficient as I could have got from Google Maps if I'd bothered to check.Another minor point about the satnav is that you select the letters and numbers of your destination address using a rotary control, but the display is in a keyboard format. I find this awkward - put the letters in keyword order for a touchscreen, but in alphabetical order if the user has to select them by turning a knob, that's what I say. Engine 1598cc, 4 cylinders Power 197bhp Transmission 6-speed manual Fuel/CO2 42.2mpg / 156g/km Acceleration 0-60mph: 7.3 seconds Top speed 143mph Price £21,945 Details correct at publication date
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