Holden Astra City 2004 review

Have you noticed how mean car parking spaces seem to have become? It's no wonder we keep suffering door dents.

So cars designed to fit into the shrinking world of overcrowding are just the ticket.

Hence the pleasure of the Holden Astra. With four doors and a pretty decent boot space, it does not feel like a bitsy little car. Yet it parks like one.

Explore the 2004 Holden Astra range

• Holden Astra City 2004 review
• Holden Astra 2004 review

Bliss. I swear this car was designed with supermarket carparks in mind because I have never been happier or more comfortable weaving my way through the high-stress mean streets of the local shopping centre where carpark rage is a way of life. The perky little Astra was right at home and ready to tuck herself in the tiniest parking space leaving Toorak Tractor mums glowering over their lofty steering wheels and rumbling on past in search of half a field for their upmarket 4WDs.

Funnily enough, even beside these smug motoring monoliths, one does not feel afflicted with small-car syndrome in little Astra.

I don't think she knows that she is a compact. She is proud and solid, well weighted to the road.

And she has that classy European feel, which is fair enough, since she is a European model, so to speak.

She drives on the left, but she wipes her windscreen to the right and indicates from the left.

It takes a moment to adjust to this. Just a moment.

Her reverse is another idiosyncracy insofar as it is one of those pull up the collar around the gearstick styles – before moving the stick up and left.

Thoughtfully, they have placed a red strip at the 50km spot on the speedo, which is a blessing in the suburbs where one is forever keeping an eye on the dial.

She runs on the smell of an oily rag, which is all we want in the time of rising petrol prices. And she is quite comfy for driver and passengers.

Now, I have only had nice things to say about this little honey. And I approve of the fact that she has a rear windscreen wiper, too. And that she has pyrotechnic seat-belt pre-tensioners. Whatever they are, they sound hot.

However, the cupholders, darling. Oh dear. They are extremely odd. So afterthoughtish that, quite frankly, I did not dare to test them out. They are in the lid of the glove box. A bit of a stretch for the driver and very limiting in the size of drink one can carry. Maybe fine for the drive-in, if only we had drive-ins.

But since she is very much a city girl, I guess we can call the need for refreshments less important than the safety of the airbags and the absolute convenience of her size and manoeuvrability. Not to mention her price.