Opel Frontera review

Pros: Perky handling, affordable, roomy, practical, comfortable

Cons: Lots of cheap bits in the cabin, can’t have seven seats with electric power

Opel Frontera Design

The new Opel Frontera shares only a badge with the original 1990s Frontera, which is a bit of a shame as that was quite a handsome car. The new Frontera is rather less so. It’s based on the same Stellantis group ‘Smart Car’ platform as the new Citroen C3 and Fiat Grande Panda, but it ends up looking a bit too much like the Citroen, aside from the now-traditional Opel ‘Vizor’ nose treatment. At the rear, the Frontera has quite sleek lights, but the overall effect of the back end is of a big SUV rear grafted onto a smaller hatchback. You can liven it all up with a contrast colour roof, but the Frontera’s just not a looker. 

Opel Frontera Interior

Considering its likely price point the Frontera’s cabin looks and feels fairly sophisticated. Irish prices and specs aren’t finalised yet, but in the UK at least, the Frontera comes with standard twin ten-inch screens for the instruments and infotainment, and while the software on those screens doesn’t look like the most sophisticated, it’s not terrible and there’s standard Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. In some markets, the cheapest Fronteras come not with a touchscreen but instead a clamp for your smartphone and an app to connect it to the car, which is a neat idea. All of the plastics in the Frontera’s cabin are pretty cheap, but Opel has managed to make it all feel robust, rather than nasty and the optional ‘Intelli-Seat’ front seats are firm and supportive and very comfortable indeed. Their fabric covers are made from recycled plastics woven into cloth. There’s lots of small storage spaces in the front of the cabin, too.

Space in the back seats is excellent, with plenty of legroom and headroom, although the centre rear seat is pretty narrow so may not be of much use. There are useful seat back pockets and door bins in the back, and higher-spec models get small extra pockets up by the headrests, which are perfect for storing a mobile phone or earbuds. There are two USB-C sockets in the back too, and the doors open nice and wide, so it’ll be easy to load in child car seats, for which you’ll find two ISOFIX anchor points in the back.

At 460 litres the boot isn’t the biggest around, but you can adjust the boot floor height so that the Frontera has a flat loading lip. Also, the boot opening is almost a metre tall, so it’ll be easy to load in larger objects. Tumble the back seats forward and there’s 1,600 litres of space.

What about the seven-seat version? Well, we’re not sure yet. For a start, you’ll only be able to get seven seats in the hybrid model, as they won’t fit in the Frontera Electric.

Opel Frontera Performance & Drive

The Frontera Electric comes with a small 44kWh battery pack and a 113hp electric motor driving the front wheels. That doesn’t give it blistering performance — 100km/h comes up in an easy-going 12.1 seconds — and nor does it have particularly long range, at just 305km. A longer-range, 400km-capable version will follow later in 2025, but the good news is that this 44kWh version seems to be able to hit its range marks pretty reliably and doesn’t burn through its charge level too quickly unless you spend endless hours on the motorway. Equally, the lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery should be more hardy and rugged in the long term than a more sophisticated lithium-ion battery, although it is limited to 100kW fast charging.

You could pick the hybrid of course, which is based around a 1.2-litre three-cylinder petrol engine backed up by a 21kW electric motor, driving the front wheels through a six-speed automatic gearbox. This feels peppier than the Electric model (0-100km/h takes just 9.0 seconds) and it should do better than 5.5 litres per 100km in daily driving, with relatively low CO2 emissions of 118g/km.

Both versions of the Frontera are surprisingly good to drive. The steering feel is firmer and more responsive than we expected and front-end grip is good. It’s not quite fun, but it’s not bad either and the Frontera is blessed with sensible suspension tuning that’s means it’s very comfortable over bumps — especially around town — but doesn’t wallow about in tight corners. It’s a well set-up car.

Opel Frontera Pricing

Prices haven’t yet been set by Opel Ireland for the Frontera, and indeed it’s not going to arrive here until April 2025, so realistically it’s going to be more of a 252-registration model. Prices have been set for other markets, which means we can infer that the starting point should be in the region of €25,000 — competitive with the likes of the Dacia Jogger — and that the electric version will very probably be the most affordable.

Carzone Verdict

A lot depends on the Frontera’s price tag, but if that’s about what we think it to be, then the Frontera will be an affordable, versatile, practical family car that has its own utilitarian nature and which is surprisingly good to drive when the road turns twisty. It majors on comfort and passenger space (at least in this five-seat version) and ought to make an excellent family car.