Vauxhall has announced revisions for the Vectra VXR for the 2007 model year including substantially more power and tweaks to the chassis.
The new car will be shown at the
Paris Motor Show later this month in its Opel Vectra OPC version, but essentially that is the same car you can now order from your local Vauxhall dealer. The headline-grabbing change is the increase in peak power from 252bhp to 276bhp. The 2.8-litre turbocharged V6 engine features a redesigned induction system, a new engine map and other changes that Vauxhall vaguely group under "modified engine components". The net result is a drop of 0.4 seconds off the 0-60mph sprint time (now 6.1 seconds for the saloon, 6.3 seconds for the estate).
All that power is still deployed to the front wheels only, though Vauxhall has carried out a significant number of revisions to the Vectra's chassis, fitting modified springs and dampers, along with changes to the IDS (plus2) chassis control software. To allow more demanding drivers to extract the most from the car, the 'sport' setting is now more extreme.
Shane O' Donoghue - 8 Sep 2006