Car: Vauxhall Insignia Sport Tourer range
Prices: £18,455-£32,230 – on the road INSURANCE GROUPS: 7-15
Emissions: 136-274g/km
Performance: [1.8] 0-60mph 10.9s / Max Speed 128mph
Fuel Consumption: [2.0 CDTi 120] (urban) 37.2mpg / (extra urban) 58.9mpg / (combined) 48.7mpg
Safety: twin front, side & curtain airbags, ABS, ESP
Dimensions: length/width/height 4830/1856/1498mm
SIGN OF THE TIMES
Our Rating: 7.7 / 10
Vauxhall has done a thorough job of converting its Insignia to Sports Tourer estate form. Steve Walker reports.
Families now have a wealth of choice at their disposal when choosing a new car but the estate models that used to be a default choice shouldn’t be overlooked. Vauxhall’s Insignia Sports Tourer has the quality, the looks and the practicality to prove a great addition to the household.
Many predicted that MPVs and 4x4s would be the death of the estate car. There’s no doubt that they dragged it into an alleyway and roughed it up a bit but they failed to finish the job and the estate has come out fighting. With a smaller section of the market to compete over, the top estate products got their acts together. They’re now more keenly differentiated from the saloons and hatchbacks that spawned them with sleeker styling and more innovative and practical load areas. If you’d written the estate off as an outmoded product, now might be the time to give the modern take on the genre another chance and there’s no better place to start that Vauxhall’s Insignia Sports Tourer.
Making a medium range estate car used to be comparatively easy. Take the medium range hatch or saloon you’ve already got and foist an extended rear end upon it, much as you would a conservatory on a suburban semi. Back then, estates were bought by people wanting a medium range family car but who had a dog. Today, buyers with similar requirements have a whole host of MPVs and Compact 4x4s to mull over as well. It’s forced the estate manufacturers into a rethink. Vauxhall’s Insignia Sports Tourer has a series of tricks up its sleeves designed to give it an edge with a certain sort of customer but are these tweaks convincing enough?
The Insignia is available with a good spread of engines and Sports Tourer customers have the full range at their disposal. The line-up spans from a modest 138bhp 1.8-litre petrol unit to the mighty 2.8-litre V6 turbo engine which has 256bhp of punch – or over 320bhp in VXR guise. The most exciting engines sit between these extremes. Units like the 178bhp 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol unit that offers a fine compromise between pace and efficiency. Then there’s the 2.0-litre CDTi diesel options with outputs of 128bhp, 158bhp or 187bhp, the latter achieved with the aid of twin turbochargers.
The way a particular Insignia drives will be determined by more than merely the engine plumbed into its nose. Vauxhall offer customers the options of upgrading from front-wheel-drive to All-wheel-drive courtesy of the adaptive 4x4 system and of specifying the FlexRide chassis that features electronically controlled damping. A FlexRide-equipped Sports Tourer can be placed in Sport or Tour modes. In the Sport setting, steering and throttle response are sharpened, as are the suspension settings for a more dynamic driving experience.
Style is a significant weapon in the estate car’s armoury. In the war against chunky compact 4x4s and frumpy MPVs, the sleek, road-hugging lines of a well-conceived estate can have a major impact on its fortunes. The Insignia Sports Tourer definitely looks the part. Taking the core styling features of the Insignia such as the raised grille and the cutaway sections down the flanks, the designers have expertly integrated the extended rear end. With its long roofline falling away towards the rear and the tailgate wrapping around the car’s corners, the Sports Tourer is a classy visual proposition. The elegant lines don’t come at the expense of space inside either. A 540-litre load compartment can be extended to 1,510 litres with the seats properly folded. That’s significantly down on the 1,850 litres of the old Vectra estate, but then that car sat on its own extended platform, something GM couldn’t afford to do again with this Insignia.
Mere space isn’t enough anyway in this kind of car: it’s got to be usable. Vauxhall set out to ensure that the Sports Tourer fits the bill by introducing a series of features unique to this estate version. Self levelling rear suspension is standard on all models dropping the loading height to a more convenient level. Then there’s Vauxhall’s FlexOrganizer system that can be used to secure cargo in a series of rail-mounted nets and dividers. There’s even an optional powered tailgate that opens to a programmed h
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