After the summer vacation, the employees at the main Opel plant in Rüsselsheim get significantly more busy again. The car manufacturer is setting up a second shift. Because in addition to the Insignia mid-range car, which is apostrophized as the flagship, the workers also build the DS4 after the holidays. That has been clear for months. It is still unclear, however, when exactly the production start for the French model will be. August or September, they say. It is completely different with the new Astra. The compact car appears later than the DS4 in Rüsselsheim, but the date for the start of production has already been set: from November onwards, the employees are to build this car, which is so important for Opel.
Like the small car Corsa, the Astra has so far represented around a quarter of sales by the only German subsidiary of the Stellantis Group.
The new Corsa, on the other hand, is the market leader in its segment.
Almost a quarter of the newly registered vehicles of this type are electric.
The new Astra is built on a group platform called EMP2, which goes back to PSA and is also used for the DS4.
It allows hybrids with combustion and battery drives as well as pure diesel and gasoline engines.
As Opel announced, there are no longer any conventional analog displays in the car.
Rather, the Astra offers a new human-machine interface with an extra-wide touchscreen, as known from tablets or smartphones.
Regardless of the amount of French technology in the car, the carmaker attaches great importance to having designed and developed the Astra at its headquarters.
The Stellantis subsidiary continues to operate its development center there, which is smaller than it used to be after the downsizing in recent years and the partial sale to the service provider Segula.
In general, around 10,000 people still work at the headquarters, around 4,000 fewer than five years ago.
You can read our report on a test drive with the prototype of the new Astra here.