VAUXHALL ASTRA

The past few years have made us appreciate the small things in life more than ever – and sometimes it’s not the car we crave, but the sense of freedom it offers

WORDS PAUL HORRELL

PHOTOGRAPHY JONNY FLEETWOOD

Finally. This is the first of TopGear’s annual awards issues since we’ve been, broadly speaking, unshackled from COVID-19. After nearly three years of restrictions, you will imagine I’ve been busting to return to driving top-end hypercars in exotic locales. Frankly not, actually. I’ve missed most sorely the ordinary stuff: being among people I like, in places we know, doing the comfortingly familiar but being sure to do it well. As the world emerges from under the terrifying pressure of one crisis, others are lining up like a hail of meteors to take its place. These are unnerving times. Which surely urges your priorities away from the fantastical. Yet there were a dozen squillion-pound limited edition hypercars launched on the lawns of Monterey Car Week this summer and they left me queasy, as if gazing on the final twitches of a decadent empire. ‘Exclusive’ eh? Exactly why is something better simply because others can’t have it?

In these times we need ‘inclusive’. So here’s TopGear’s ordinary car of the year. The sort of car we’ve all owned or driven at some point. Hatch. Small engine. No hybrid or plug. Unsporty. But the new Astra is a fine example.

We’ve all learned since early 2020 that our time is too precious to waste on anything that’s mundane or shoddy. So I’m off to do some ordinary things, but good ones. They’ll be in beautiful places linked by great roads in a sweep of central and northern England. A roadtrip designed to be inclusive. Happily it also neatly swerves the spiralling argy bargy of Channel crossings or airports.