More then 6,000 fleet managers and readers of the industry magazine “Autoflotte” have made their decision: the Opel Zafira 1.6 CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) is the best car of the year 2002 in the category “Alternative Propulsion”.
Reliability and low maintenance costs were two significant factors that led to the natural gas-fueled compact van’s victory in the seventh Fleet Award.
Autoflotte is read mainly by fleet managers at government authorities, institutions and companies – a target group which has discovered the special advantages of natural gas-powered vehicles in a big way.
As a result, nearly every second natural gas Zafira is in commercial use.
Opel’s 97 hp Zafira 1.6 CNG is the first and thus far the only monovalent natural gas volume production vehicle that can also run on gasoline. The Zafira CNG has a 14 liter gasoline reserve tank in addition to four natural gas tanks. This enables drivers to switch to gasoline when the CNG tanks are nearing empty and there are no natural gas filling stations in the area.

Following the launch of the Opel Zafira 1.6 CNG compact van, the economical and environmentally friendly Opel Astra Caravan 1.6 CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) has a 14-liter reserve gasoline tank in addition to two large-volume gas tanks. This enables the driver to switch to gasoline operations if the gas tanks are running close to empty and there is no natural gas filling station nearby. This increases the operating radius from 370 to about 520 kilometers.
The Astra Caravan 1.6 CNG is no different from gasoline or diesel engine models when it comes to interior space.
A fuel consumption rate of 5.1 kg of natural gas per 100 km makes for a fuel cost reduction of some 30 percent as compared to a similarly powered diesel and about 50 percent as compared to a comparable gasoline engine model
The Astra station wagon 1.6 CNG is part of Opel’s threefold strategy designed to reduce the new fleet carbon dioxide emission level to 140 grams per km by the year 2008.