Road Test: Holden Tigra

By Feann Torr - 19/Jan/2006

The Opel-sourced Barina of old may be gone from Australian new car show rooms, and in its place is a Korean-built car, but the halo vehicle for the Barina range remains - in the form of the small-but-vivacious German-designed Tigra.

Featuring a metal folding roof, allowing for open-air motoring at the touch of a button (and the flipping of a pair of latches), the Tigra hails from GM's German operation Opel, representing an alternative to vehicles such as the French 206CC and upcoming Mitsubishi Colt CZC - all coupe convertibles.

In addition to its compact and sophisticated styling, one of the Tigra's biggest drawcards is it's price - $34,990. While the entry level 206CC fetches $32,990, it gets a smaller, less powerful 1.6-litre engine, and doesn't look quite as good as the more modern Tigra. Holden's compact convertible has plenty of practical appeal too, with items such as ABS, four airbags, a Blaupunkt CD stereo and cruise control.

With this sub $35k pricepoint, Holden's Tigra opens up the realm of the hard top convertible to more customers, and I must say, after cruising around for a week with Holden's little tacker, I'd forgotten how much fun drop tops can be.

Holden chief Denny Mooney is an astute fellow, conceding that the model is not likely to set the sales charts on fire, yet is still an integral part of the GM marketing machine in Australia: "Tigra delivers fun, excitement and image and enhances your brand. It's not a big volume car but it provides amazing value and complements the Astra convertible."

There is one question that remains unanswered though - how does the Tigra perform in the real world? Let's have a look:

Drive: 3.5/5

The Tigra is an 'image' model designed to enhance the Holden brand not through high sales, but nouveau design

With the roof up the Tigra still looks good, but nowhere near as stylish as when the top has been dropped

The Tigra has more of a 'meow' than a 'roar', but can be a lot of fun given some twisty roads

The Holden Tigra is an interesting looking car - outside and in. From the outside there are resemblances to the Opel Corsa/Barina, and inside the similarities are even more obvious.

Dash, seats and switchgear are all familiar, though the leather-trimmed seats supply occupants with a very sporty, low seating position, while also giving the interior a more polished ambience.

Having not driven too many convertibles in my time, and blessed with some lovely weather in the south eastern Australian state of Victoria, it was almost like being on holiday when driving the Tigra with the top down.

Even in summer, Melbourne can be pretty cold in the morning, yet it's terrific to just pop the top, take off your shoes and crank the heater on your feet in such cold-but-sunny conditions. With the brisk wind in your face and with the sky above unobstructed, there are few things that compare.

It's also a real buzz driving through temperate rainforests with all the smells and sounds of the environment gently pervading your senses as you cruise around.

The pair of small sunvisors affixed to the inside of the reinforced front windscreen tend to rattle around a bit as the car rolls over imperfections in the road surface, which also highlights the vehicles relatively rigid levels of suspension tune. The suspension is a nice compromise between sport and comfort; it’ll cruise happily all day long with bearable jiggles, but can also hold a decent line through a corner.

Aggressive tread patterns on the 205/50 R16 tyres translate into good levels of grip with the standard 16-inch alloys (the optional 17s would be even better) and when the rubber warms up the car grips the road tightly. The short wheel base also ensures deft turn-ins as you approach corners, and being a front wheel driver it delivers a far from neutral feel, yet is still predictable to pilot and quite composed through corners.

Though no supercar, you can maintain good levels of forward momentum in the Tigra. Powered by a 1.8-litre 4-cylinder engine it develops a useful 92kW of power @ 6000rpm and first gear revs out cleanly and quickly to get the show moving, and just as you're about to hit the redline the small 5-speed manual gearshifter can be rapidly shifted into second, which will keep things going until almost 100km/h.

The Tigra has a responsive steering feel for a front wheel driver as well - and quite light underhand - but offers only average levels of feedback through the wheel. This could be due in part to the speed-sensitive, electrically assisted steering system, which is practical but not traditional. Give me the old mechanical rack and peanut steering anyday.

Still, you don't need to push too hard on the tiller to get it go in the desired direction, and this translates appreciably to city/urban driving as well. The 10.6 metre kerb to kerb steering lock isn't brilliant, but the car's prim dimensions ensure that parking the convertible is an absolute breeze.

During enthusiastic driving stints, it will lean on its outside front wheel a little bit when you're really trying - but it's nothing that upsets the vehicle's attitude mid-corner - I must say that the Tigra has a well-sorted suspension array. And even if you do end up arriving at a too-tight corner with plenty of heat, it holds on quite nicely and is easy to correct thanks to its lean build.

In Holden speak the Tigra gets "sports tuned dampers", plus reinforced front stabiliser bars, and a "hydroformed rear axle with modified torsional profile to optimise grip and roll control".

Sure, it had a little more bodyroll than I would have liked, but overall I was quite impressed at the velocity it could carry through a bend before tyre adhesion waned. Roadholding is good, handling is good, and ride is probably half a notch below these - let's call it largely satisfactory.

Wind in the cabin isn't too bad with the roof lowered - the wind breaker behind the seat headrests does a fairly good job at reducing turbulence, but 6-foot or 6-foot 1-inch tall drivers will experience a modicum of swirling about the crown of their heads. Scuttle shake is a minor problem at best; the windscreen members and floorpan will flex in small amounts (if you're looking for it), but not half as much as I expected them to.

Traction control and ESP are missing, yet the thinking behind that could have been that the car is too underpowered to need it? The brakes are neither brilliant nor terrible, occupying a middle ground that offers more than enough deceleration for most situations. Ventilated discs, they measure 260mm in diametre up front and 240mm at the rear.

For such a small car its got a lot of road presence too, and if you want to attract attention simply drop the top at the traffic lights, as it only takes about 20 seconds (18 according to Holden documentation). Everybody seems to be interested in what the car is, particularly with the top down and stylish roll bars adding a good amount of visual intrigue.

On our numerous expeditions to the Victorian high country the 1248kg car garnered a lot of attention from both drivers and peds. The front end looks brilliant, and while the rear isn't too bad, it looks a bit dorky with the roof up (coupe mode) as the proportions become a bit skewed, and its aesthetic appeal dwindles accordingly.

All told, I came away from driving the Tigra with a smile on my face. Not just because it's a convertible, but because it doesn't mind being pushed hard through the twisty stuff, exhibiting a sporty personality when called for.

Engine: 3.5/5

The engine is far from a weak link in the Tigra's defence matrix. It feels quite zippy under full throttle, and will chirp the front wheels into second gear when you're really pushing. Put that down to the car's lack of variable valve timing, which ensures direct power delivery unhindered by the cam profiles swapping and changing.

Not only that, it is an efficient powerplant too -- the 1.8-litre straight 4-cylinder offers a good mix of power and practicality, returning a combined cycle fuel efficiency of 7.8L per 100km.

The throws of the 5-speed gear shifter are relatively short and, in conjunction with the light, positive feel of the clutch, popping the car in and out of gears is actually rather enjoyable.

It's a good engine-gearbox combo, though if any criticism is to be levelled against it, I would whinge about the gear shift knob being a touch too small for larger handed folk.

As mentioned previously, the engine isn't the stuff of supercar legend, but it does get the Tigra moving quite rapidly, and sometimes a liberal poke of clutch mid-gear can get the revs up to where they need to be for the action to really begin - about 4500-5000rpm.

It does feel a tad sluggish low in the rev range, but that's to be expected when power peaks @ 6000rpm. If you keep the revs high the little buzz box becomes a more serious road warrior, yet with the top down it's sometimes almost just as enjoyable to just cruise around leisurely. Holden describes the engine as 'lively' and I reckon that's a pretty good proclamation.

Exterior: 3.5/5

The angular front end works well, giving the Tigra plenty of personality

The overall interior design is not too bad, it's just that there are some cheap and flimsy plastics used, particularly around the transmission tunnel region

With an angular, wedge-shaped overall look, not to mention a good deal of sophistication from the projector-lensed headlight cluster and shiny grille, the Tigra comes across as a thoroughly modern looking vehicle. I'm no fan of the word, but I must admit that it is rather chic (pronounced sheek, I'm told).

Holden explains that the design was the result of Opel and Heuliez designers (the French coachbuilder) working in tandem. Heuliez did most of the work on the roof - a two-piece structure that's akin to engineering artwork.

It's a fancy folding, bending contraption that gives the vehicle a pretty good silhouette - roof closed - from the front, though the side profile and rear look a bit awkward with the long rear deck, but that's to be expected when such a small car has to accommodate a folding metal roof.

When the roof's open however, the Tigra looks great, particularly when combined with the sporty bodykit, pumped wheel arches, 16-inch wheels and the "wave-shaped" aluminium roll bar.

Interior: 3.5/5

Considering its small proportions - measuring less than 4.0 metres in length - the interior is understandably small, so two seats were the only option. The seats are pretty good - finished in a grippy metallic cloth stitch in the central sections with the sides upholstered in what appeared to be leather, giving interior proceedings a little more import.

There's storage spaces in the door bottoms (featuring cup holder cut outs and enough room for a thick maps/directories) and there's a very useful 70 litre storage shelf behind the two seats, at about kidney height, that'll fit a couple of briefcases. It's thin, but quite deep stretching back about half a metre.

The leather steering wheel is nice, and though the metal accents in the cabin look a little tacky, it's a pretty good interior for the price you pay. HVAC controls are a bit old hat, looking as they came from a 1993 Barina, but features such as alloy pedals, alloy look handbrake and a sporty leather gear shifter make up for this. Practical features like air-conditioning, cruise control and electric windows and mirrors are bundled in there too.

Interior space isn't copious - headroom could be a bit better, but you can always remedy that at the push of a button. The dials and instrumentation aren't too bad, what with their chrome rims, though the speedo and tacho are not separate dials, but rather conjoined.

The stereo is pretty good in the Tigra, and this is an even more important aspect of the car than usual, as the extroverted nature of drop top driving necessitates audio clarity, particularly when you're cruising around the trendy parts of town. The radio sounds average, but the single in-dash CD player sounds considerably better, able to hold higher volumes without distorting.

The centre console looks a bit crappy and the transmission tunnel is a bit flimsy, with cheap plastics and a lack of reinforcement. The door handles are coated with polished metal, providing for a pleasant tactile treat when getting out of the pint-sized car, while roof controls are on located on the inside of the drivers door.

It tends to rattle and shake a little bit (sun visors mainly), but this is but a small price to pay for a convertible with a rigid roof member. There were reports that some of the early 206 CC roof systems would bung up every now and then, but in the Tigra it worked really well; in fact the roof mechanism itself worked flawlessly every time. We had zero problems.

The roof won't actuate unless the two latches have been unhooked and the handbrake is on, which is probably a good thing. The boot too, is electronic (push button operated, as it is also an integral member of the folding roof mechanism, and hence actuates both ways: rearward for the boot, forward for the roof). Boot space with the roof up is pretty good (378 litres), but with the top down there'd barely be enough room for fifty bucks worth of groceries.

Overall: 3.5/5

Holden's Tigra is a ball to drive - it's almost like being on holiday driving with the top down, and was a Persian cat's whisker away from getting a score of four Wombats, particularly for its progressive handling abilities.

For less than $35k I was quite impressed with what the Tigra brought to the table: weather protection and the added security benefits of a metal roof; trendy Euro styling; a lively powertrain and a more-than-capable chassis. Furthermore, Holden's first 2-seat hardtop convertible was even crowned "Cabrio of the Year 2004" at the Geneva Motor Show - some useless trivia to tell your friends and colleagues if you get one.

$35,000 for a small 2-seater - is that money well spent? Before driving it I thought “not for me - too girly” but after spending more time with it, I have to admit that the Tigra did grow on me - it's on-road attitude is flexible but always highly enjoyable.

Having a convertible vehicle in a country like Australia is just brilliant, and when you head off on a sunny Saturday morning up into the hills, you almost couldn't put a price on the relaxed enjoyment roofless driving offers.