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Month 9 living with a Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer: SUV buyers take note
I’m confident a fair number of erudite CAR readers will skip this report. You’ll look at this vast Vauxhall and think ‘Meh. It’s no M5, Bentayga or Fiesta ST. Nothing to see here. Poor chap… Imagine being lumbered with that old barge.’ And you’d be wrong.
I love this big red estate. I love the way it effortlessly ticks every box in our family transport brief. I love its winning combination of handle-anything attitude and go-anywhere ability. I love its brisk performance, plumply cushioned ride quality and surprisingly adept handling. And, much like I felt when I ran a Dacia Duster a few years ago, I love its anti-snob underdog status. Handing it back after spending six months and 12,500 miles together was a real wrench.
There’s no well-hidden secret or stand-out feature to the Vauxhall’s enduring appeal. It’s a traditional plus-sized estate. It’s big on the outside and big on the inside – long, low and wide so that passengers and their luggage have a spacious and intelligently configured cabin and loadbay.
It’s surprisingly pacey. The smooth but somewhat vocal 2.0-litre twin-turbo diesel engine stumps up plenty of grunt to shrug aside the Griffin’s chubby 1633kg kerbweight and slingshot it along with ease.
There’s also a glint in the Vauxhall’s dynamic eye. Its direct and accurate steering, the ability to firm up the variable dampers for enhanced body control, and the GKN-sourced Twinster torque-vectoring, all-wheel-drive set up, collectively mean that tackling fast, serpentine roads is a far more athletic and enjoyable undertaking than you’d expect, irrespective of weather conditions.
It’s handsome, too. Agreed, solid red is arguably not its best colour – it was chosen for photographic reasons – but I think it’s an engaging bit of design, with sound proportions and interesting detailing.
For many, the Tourer’s chunky £35,685 fully optioned price didn’t sit too comfortably with its status-free badge. But cast aside your badge snobbishness for a second and compare it to the £50k Jaguar XF Sportbrake and £62k Mercedes-Benz All-Terrain that left our long-term test fleet a few months back, and the Vauxhall is undeniably good value.
There are some real standout features. The £1295 optional IntelliLux LED Matrix headlights are superb at illuminating the entire road ahead while never blinding other drivers. The eight-speaker Bose audio system is utterly sensational. The incredibly supportive and comfortable sports front seats (£1155 option) ensure I disembark ache-free after every trip. The children love the panoramic sunroof (£960 option), and the fold-away towbar (£685 option) was a boon when I needed to transport both people and bicycles.
So what don’t I like? Fuel economy that rarely stuck its head over the 35mpg parapet is disappointing. CO2 emissions of 188g/km mean big VED bills. The dash and screen user-interface is pretty slow and ho-hum. And it’s a pity you can’t independently tweak the dampers, throttle response, steering weighting and gearshift calibration rather than have them all pre-set.
But these issues are more than outweighed by the Vauxhall’s overall composure, competence and confidence. It’s the car too many status-obsessed, tailgating SUV drivers will simply dismiss out of hand. Which makes it pretty much perfect in my book.
By Ben Whitworth
Logbook: Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer
Price £28,435
As tested £35,685
Engine 1956cc 16v turbodiesel 4-cyl, 207bhp @ 4000rpm
Transmission 8-speed auto, all-wheel drive
Performance 7.7sec 0-62mph, 142mph 188g/km CO2
Miles this month 767
Total 12,555
Our mpg 34.4
Official mpg 39.8
Fuel this month £117.53
Extra costs None
Month 8 living with a Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer: leading lights
Spending £1295 on optional IntelliLux LED Matrix headlights sounds like a lot, but they are outstanding. You can see the corona of light created by the 32 LEDs in each unit constantly changing their output and position to create optimal visibility without blinding other road users. They peer around corners and illuminate the road edge. If you can avoid a potentially tricky situation before it turns into trouble, that’s money well spent.
By Ben Whitworth
Logbook: Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer
Price £28,435
As tested £35,685
Engine 1956cc 16v turbodiesel 4-cyl, 207bhp @ 4000rpm
Transmission 8-speed auto, all-wheel drive
Performance 7.7sec 0-62mph, 142mph 188g/km CO2
Miles this month 746
Total 11,788
Our mpg 34.4
Official mpg 39.8
Fuel this month £117.53
Extra costs None
Month 7 of our Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer long-term test review: this or a Tesla Model X?
I’ve seen our all-wheel-drive Insignia estate in a very different light in the last few weeks. This change of attitude and generally warmer appreciation was triggered by bumping into a friend of a friend. He was on the verge of taking delivery of a Tesla Model X – you know, the big one with the fancy DeLorean DMC-12 doors. As is often the case with Tesla buyers, he was a trifle enthusiastic about his car and all that it embodies.
And he’s right to be evangelical about his new wheels. Up to a point. The Model X is – literally, technically and conceptually – a mighty bit of kit. It’s eye-wateringly advanced; with a tyre chirp and a faint whir it has fast-forwarded us into the future, a two-and-a-half-tonne vanguard of tomorrow’s transport, one that encapsulates all the good and bad that modern mobility entails.
Viewed against this white heat of technology, the Country Tourer is a pensioner, a Super 8 home movie in an IMAX world of full-format 8K. It’s a big family-lugging estate for a start, an automotive shape nudged towards extinction by buyers who see blobby SUVs as the only way forward. Highlights of its connectivity are a wi-fi hotspot and an on-call concierge service – services that will be canned in 2019. And it has one of those fiendish pipes lurking beneath the rear bumper that spits out smelly climate-warming gases because it burns the devil’s own choice of fuel.
So passé, you say. Yes. But the Vauxhall’s silver bullet is its price. A well-specced Insignia Tourer costs £28,435 – that’s a modest deposit and a little over £300 a month on Vauxhall’s current offer of five years at zero per cent interest. Still a chunk of money each month, but way less than the £13k deposit and £1700 monthly payments my mate’s mate will be paying for the next four years at 5.4 per cent APR.
Make no mistake, the all-electric movement is gaining ground very quickly – Hyundai’s new £29.5k Kona Electric will have a realistic range of 300 miles, as does Jaguar’s new i-Pace, and there’s a slew of BMW, Mercedes and Audi EVs lined up for 2019 onwards. But for most of us on normal salaries, normal cars like this affordable Vauxhall will continue to be relevant for a long time to come.
By Ben Whitworth
Logbook: Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer
Price £28,435 As tested £35,685
Engine 1956cc 16v turbodiesel 4-cyl, 207bhp @ 4000rpm
Transmission 8-speed auto, all-wheel drive
Performance 7.7sec 0-62mph, 142mph 188g/km CO2
Miles this month 912
Total 11,042
Our mpg 34.9
Official mpg 39.8
Fuel this month £117.53
Extra costs None
Month 6 living with an Insignia Country Tourer: bike vs boot
An enthusiastic gin-fuelled eBay bid sees me acquire a Giant Anthem X mountain bike. It’s a lovely bit of 29-inch-wheeled full-suspension kit, but my post-purchase enthusiasm is tempered somewhat when I realise the bike is in Bristol – a good six-hour round trip from my home near Chichester.
The Giant’s collection is a trip seemingly designed specifically to shine a light on Big Red’s very finest qualities. The Vauxhall’s long-legged gear ratios – an indicated 35mph per 1000rpm in eighth – and bountiful torque combine to deliver fast, relaxed cruising; the adaptive LED headlamps turn night into noon; the heated and low-slung driver’s seat cossets; the adaptive dampers cushion; and Walker Hayes is loud and clear through the Bose audio system.
Loading the Giant into the Vauxhall is equally painless. Toggling two buttons in the boot flips the rear seats forward to create a vast and regularly-shaped loadbay that swallows the Giant with ease, helped by the integrated sliding luggage tie-downs for securing the bike. So, a 292-mile trip in just over four and a half hours, returning me home in time for a late breakfast – life with this Insignia is just effortless.
By Ben Whitworth
Logbook: Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer
Price £28,435
As tested £35,685
Engine 1956cc 16v turbodiesel 4-cylinder, 207bhp @ 4000rpm
Transmission 8-speed auto, all-wheel drive
Performance 7.7sec 0-62mph, 142mph, 188g/km CO2
Miles this month 1564
Total 10130
Our mpg 35.7
Official mpg 39.8
Fuel this month £212.29
Extra costs None
Month 5 living with an Insignia Country Tourer: round-up
Big Red’s boot easily swallowed our holiday luggage, and the mix of cushioned ride and muscular go made light work of 550 miles.
Its icy air-con, punchy Bose audio and ache-free seats all scored highly. But the onboard wi-fi refused to play ball, so no streamed music or social media. And 35mpg in sedate driving isn’t great.
By Ben Whitworth
Logbook: Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer
Price £28,435
As tested £35,685
Engine 1956cc 16v turbodiesel 4-cylinder, 207bhp @ 4000rpm
Transmission 8-speed auto, all-wheel drive
Performance 7.7sec 0-62mph, 142mph, 188g/km CO2
Miles this month 1370
Total 8566
Our mpg 35.2
Official mpg 39.8
Fuel this month £212.29
Extra costs None
Month 4 living with a Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer: comparing it with our Merc E-Class All Terrain
Last month’s brief jaunt in Ben Oliver’s very shiny E-Class All-Terrain left me horribly disappointed with the way the Merc bounced and blancmanged its way along some challenging Welsh blacktop. As an enduring lover of both the Mercedes-Benz marque (despite its too-regular transgressions) and of big family-sized estates, the all-wheel drive E-Class should have been bang on my target. It missed by a Conwy mile. So once back in the sunny south, this Ben and that Ben swapped cars.
Despite the yawning chasm that separates their social standing, these high-rise haulers are identical in concept and execution: big swallow-all estates with torque-laden diesel grunt, four-wheel drive and a raised ride height for clambering over kerbs and tackling the craggy and acned paths that masquerade as roads in this so-called first world nation. They even wear similar body cladding to signify their faux Paris-Dakar credentials.
So, let’s start with that which made me shake my head. First up – the Mercedes’ eye-bleeding £61,260 price tag. Dear God. Sixty one large for a family estate. Agreed, the 350d is bursting at the seams with high-tech safety, lighting, sound and driver-assistance kit, much of it standard, but it makes the £35,685 Insignia look very much like the bargain it arguably is. If I’m eBaying my kidney to afford business-class family transport, I’d also want something much sleeker and less chintzy than the dull-looking chrome-splattered All-Terrain. The Vauxhall’s starkly contrasting lipstick-red paintwork and matt plastic armour may not appeal to all, but look beyond the colour and it’s a far more arresting car to look at.
And to drive. Punt the Insignia along and, for a chunky top-heavy estate, it rides and handles with a degree of athleticism and dynamism you don’t expect but you can certainly enjoy. Not so the Mercedes. Sure, it brings 254bhp, a stout 457lb ft of torque and intelligent all-corner grip to the go-faster party, but with a 2010kg kerbweight, fuzzy steering and a redline-reluctant engine, the E-Class is best kept to fast motorway and A-road work.
Where the Mercedes does claw back points – and lots of them – is where you’d expect it to. Levels of refinement are first class. It cocoons and cossets, where the Vauxhall merely transports. Its muscular V6 engine is so discreet and urbane you barely hear it above car park speeds and the satiny-smooth nine-speed ’box slips imperceptibly between gears, while the air-sprung suspension sponges away all but the worst intrusions. The vast single-screen dashboard may be an absolute eyesore to look at, but my, its clarity, seamless phone hook-up, and overall intuitive navigation through its central Comand controller are all wonderful. Same goes for the Burmester audio system, which despite horrific chrome doily speaker covers offers superb sound quality.
I guess I’ll miss the Mercedes, with its mile-eating refinement and software sophistication. But not nearly as much as I hoped I would.
By Ben Whitworth
Month 3 living with a Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer long-term test review: what’s it like to drive?
Unsurprisingly, this spacious, comfortable, kit-laden and brisk estate has fitted in to our daily routine with ease. In its relatively short time with us, it’s become clear that although it doesn’t excel in any one particular area, it’s pretty damned good at pretty much everything.
It’s the size of the Vauxhall that people comment on most. At 4986mm long, its just 213mm shorter than a long-wheelbase Range Rover, but because it’s low and narrow (relatively speaking) it doesn’t feel like a big car. Lounging and luggage space is embarrassingly generous (see rear legroom below).
The Insignia’s adaptive dampers deliver a truly pillowy ride quality in Tourer mode, and a surprisingly firm and tied-down ride in Sport, with Standard delivering a well-judged compromise between the two. Handy when regularly tacking a mix of school run (Standard), A- and B-road commute (Sport) and motorway schlep (Tourer).
The grunty twin-turbo engine has loosened up, but with 354lb ft of torque arriving at just 1500rpm, it’s all about short-shifting the eight-speed auto through its closely stacked ratios for plenty of pace.
Other high points include the brilliant Bose audio system and the outstanding LED active headlamps that constantly adjust their output for maximum illumination without affecting oncoming traffic.
By Ben Whitworth
Logbook: Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer
Price £28,435
As tested £35,685
Engine 1956cc 16v turbodiesel 4-cylinder, 207bhp @ 4000rpm
Transmission 8-speed auto, all-wheel drive
Performance 7.7sec 0-62mph, 142mph, 188g/km CO2
Miles this month 4058
Total 6087
Our mpg 34.4
Official mpg 39.8
Fuel this month £650.36
Extra costs None
Month 2 of our long-term test: oodles of space in a sober package
Borrowed Ben Whitworth’s Insignia in wellie boots for a few hours, intrigued to see Vauxhall’s take on the Allroad genre. What with Volvo’s Cross Country models, VW’s Alltracks, Skoda’s Scouts and countless others appearing by the week, there seems to be no end to the industry’s fascination with soft-roaders.
The Country Tourer conforms to type: a rustic name, a little extra ride height and some plastic accoutrements to lend a whiff of toughness to the Insignia’s stance. So far, so predictable. And I think the Post Office red paint job on our long-termer only adds to the no-nonsense vibe of the ‘Sig.
It’s big, it’s capacious, it has a slither of otherworldliness to it. Bag one at the right price and you’ll have a very capable, alt-wagon to stand out from the predictable crowd. Who needs a crossover, anyway?
By Tim Pollard
Month 1 of our Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer long-term test review: the introduction
On the automotive sector’s venn diagram, the Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer is pretty damned nichey. Firstly, it’s a Vauxhall. While recent post-PSA-purchase reports of Luton’s imminent demise might be a trifle precipitate, the days when the Griffin dominated the UK’s sales charts are now well and truly behind us.
Secondly it’s a swallow-all estate, a format that has fallen well out of favour now that most families tend to buy chubby SUVs. And thirdly, it’s a diesel, which depending on what news outlet you read either makes it a child-killing desert-creating chariot of Satan, or the correct and economical choice for a multi-tasking family vehicle.
In a nutshell, the surprisingly sleek and undeniably handsome car on my driveway is to mass mainstream appeal what tripe is to culinary fashionability. However, simply because it won’t be snapped up in numbers to prompt the introduction of a second assembly line at Rüsselsheim doesn’t mean it’s unworthy of consideration.
This is the £28,435 Country model, flagship of the Insignia Tourer range and powered by FCA/GM’s 2.0-litre twin-turbo diesel engine, driving all four wheels through an eight-speed automatic gearbox. The sequentially blown powerplant develops 207bhp at 4000rpm and a very generous 354lb ft at just 1500rpm, enough for an entertainingly snappy 7.7-second dash to 62mph and a 142mph top speed. Combined economy and CO2 emission figures are a significantly less exciting 39.8mpg and 188g/km.
To call the Country a mere estate is to sell it rather short. The Country moniker means it’s the elevated all-wheel-drive version aimed at the few sensible folk left in this country who need a modicum of muddy-road ability but don’t feel the need to follow the lemmings and purchase a full-on mountain basher the size and weight of a modest two-up, two-down.
A 20mm increase in ride height coupled with GKN’s compact and highly intelligent Twinster torque-vectoring all-wheel-drive set-up – plus the must-have plastic cladding signifiers – means the Country has both the hardware and the looks to tackle most of the off-road conditions most drivers will ever face.
Sitting atop the Tourer tree means kit levels are exceedingly generous, and to this we’ve added IntelliLux LED Matrix headlights (£1295), sports front seats (£1155), panoramic sunroof (£960), head-up display (£290) and a raft of driver assistance technologies, which we’ll cover and test in more detail in the following reports. Total price is £35,685.
Now, depending on your perspective that’s either ridiculously dear for a car with a griffin on its nose or it’s rather good value when put it up against similarly specified sniffier rivals like the VW Passat Alltrack and Volvo V60 Cross Country (£36,090 and £36,580 respectively, before extras). And when comparing equivalent models, I also think it has the jump on the smaller Skoda Octavia Scout (£30,355) and the leftfield Subaru Outback (£34,995). The next six months will see if I’m right.
By Ben Whitworth
Logbook: Vauxhall Insignia Country Tourer
Engine 1956cc 16v 4-cyl twin-turbo diesel, 207bhp @ 4000rpm, 354lb ft @ 3600rpm
Gearbox Eight-speed auto, all-wheel drive
Performance 7.7sec 0-62mph, 142mph, 188g/km CO2
Price £28,345
As tested £35,685
Miles this month 2029
Total 2029
Our mpg 34.4
Official mpg 39.8
Fuel £352.53
Extra costs £0
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