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Vauxhall Insignia VXR road test report

VXR

The Vauxhall Insignia VXR is one of those hotly anticipated cars that get some car fans in a bit of a tizzy, especially those Vauxhall fans who love cars that carry VXR badges. Vauxhall’s VXR cars always have a sense of ‘Sturm und Drang’ about them: they tap into the primal urges of petrolheads with loud engines, but they’re never the best cars of their type. So has this V6-powered, four-wheel-drive hot version of the Insignia saloon learned anything from the VXR8 that Vauxhall imported from its Australian sister company, Holden, or does it again promise more than it delivers?

Road Test Reports Says 3 star rating
A front-facing image of the Vauxhall Insignia VXR

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Image number 2 of the Vauxhall Insignia VXR Image number 3 of the Vauxhall Insignia VXR Image number 4 of the Vauxhall Insignia VXR
CRAIG THOMAS SAYS

Performance Performance - 3 stars

The Insignia VXR is powered by a 2.8-litre V6 petrol engine that produces identical amounts of power and torque: 321bhp at 5,250rpm and 321lb-ft at 5,250rpm. These figures translate into a 0-60mph time of 5.6 seconds and a top speed of 155mph. Starting up the engine, there’s an immediate sense of letdown: we expected a fire-breathing, raucous engine note, but it turned out to be somewhat muted. On the move, the car is also initially disappointing, totally lacking the brutal urge you usually associate with VXR-badged Vauxhalls. In fact, the 0-60mph time seems generous, as the engine only seems to come alive north of 4,000rpm: when it’s there, admittedly, the car starts to get interesting, but when driving in real-world you don’t get too many opportunities to dial in 4,000 revs. Unless you regularly frequent track days, chances to use this engine at its optimal performance will be few and far between.

Ride & Handling Ride & Handling - 4 stars

Vauxhall has made a decent fist of helping the car to make the most of its power on the road, with the addition of a four-wheel-drive set-up providing plenty of traction. The Sport or VXR buttons (the latter turns the coloured glow from the instruments to red) help to make the driving dynamics a little sharper, but not enough to overcome the Insignia VXR’s underlying lack of involvement, especially the steering. On the plus side, the ride quality is very good, thanks to an adaptive damper system with three settings – Comfort, Sport and VXR. Sport is probably the best of the three, offering a compromise between the softer ride of Comfort and the firm sportiness of VXR. However, for a car with 20” wheels, the ride comfort of all three settings is very impressive. So the Insignia VXR has pleasingly ditched its hooligan nature in favour of something a bit more refined and grown-up. However, in doing this, it’s also lost the element of fun that makes you grin despite yourself when behind the wheel of a mad-sounding, torque-steering VXR. Which is the point of having a car bearing those letters.

Build Quality & Reliability Build Quality & Reliability - 3 stars

The VXR version shares much of its build quality with the rest of the Insignia range, so it feels pretty sturdy and in line with modern production values for cars in its class. The are also all the extra VXR touches that try to take the model up the levels that we expect of a car in the £32,000 bracket, but it still can’t match similarly priced cars from the likes of Audi or BMW. Reliability has to be a question too. Vauxhall doesn’t usually perform very well in customer satisfaction surveys such at JD Power, the company in 26th out of 29 in the manufacturers’ league table and its models all in the lower reaches of the league table of cars (for example, the Insignia’s predecessor, the Vectra, is 78th out of 101 cars). This doesn’t augur well for this car, but we’ll suspend judgement until it’s been around a while.

Safety & Security Safety & Security - 4 stars

The Insignia has been successfully tested by Euro NCAP, being awarded five stars and scoring 91% under the new system: adult occupant protection scores 94%, child protection scores 74%, pedestrian impact scores 40% and the Safety Assist score is 71%. The VXR version has all the safety equipment fitted as standard that sometimes only appears on the option list for other Insignias. So there are the usual airbags (driver, passenger and side ‘bags), ESP and ABS, plus adaptive headlights. Of course, the four-wheel-drive and electronic limited slip differential also make a significant contribution to the Insignia VXR’s safety, adding extra traction to help make the car more sure-footed in tricky road conditions. For security – necessary for a car as desirable as a VXR among the joy-riding and car thief classes – there’s central locking, an alarm and immobiliser.

Space & Practicality Space & Practicality - 3 stars

The VXR is just a hot version of the Insignia, so it has all the space advantages of a large family car – and in the case of this model, its disadvantages too, as the swooping roofline does tend to restrict headroom in the rear. Apart from that, there’s plenty room in the front and the back is perfectly decent in terms of legroom. The instrumentation is very much like the rest of the Insignia, with a few extra VXR buttons and touches, such as an oddly shaped (and pointless) ‘statement’ gearstick. In fact, there are probably too many buttons and switches, and their layout isn’t the most logical (we found ourselves looking around for a particular switch at one point – not good when you’re supposed to be looking at the road). The boot is about standard for the class of car, the 530 litres being plenty big enough for most of the luggage-lugging that this car will be needed for.

Ownership & Value Ownership & Value - 3 stars

Perhaps the biggest problem with the Insignia VXR is that the purchase price of £32,290 (which doesn’t include metallic paint and a sat nav unit), pits it against the Audi S4 and BMW 335i. The German cars are both just three grand or so more expensive, have much lower CO2 emissions – and both are considerably better: the S4 is half-a-second quicker to 62mph, has the same all-wheel drive, a sweeter-sounding engine and is more engaging to drive; the Beemer is as quick, has the rear-drive fun factor and is more fuel-efficient. The Vauxhall’s running costs aren’t cheap either: official fuel consumption of 24.7mpg (which will probably be considerably less in the real world, especially if run at the 4,000rpm it takes to get the most out of the engine) will require lots of trips to the petrol station and CO2 emissions of 268g/km will see owners shelling out the maximum £405 a year in road tax.

Submitted: 17/05/2010 09:07:39

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