The Astra H is an old car now, the last of them are over 11yrs old and the priorities when looking at cars of this age and price point are reliability and ease of maintenance. While there’s not much wrong with a well cared for Astra other than the cheap interior and dull handling you are limiting yourself too much by opting to look at only one make, model and engine. I’d open up the search a bit and if sporty performance and handling are an absolute must then add in the Mazda 3 2.0 Sport and Honda Civic EP3 2.0 Type-S, perhaps the later 1.8 V-TEC S. The Ford Focus Mk III 1.6 turbo is a good car if you can find more money but if not then the earlier Mk II 1.8/2.0 petrols go well enough and handle brilliantly. Personally though I’d rather have a good basic example of any of these than a tatty sporty example. An old car driven hard won’t last any length of time anyway so I’d opt for something less potent but more reliable until I could afford a good one.

Edited by SLO76 on 01/06/2021 at 23:43