Hi,
My car is in the garage at the moment and my company has hired me an Insignia.
Really impressed with the car as I have been disappointed with previous Vauxhalls. It rides very well (it has 17" wheels) and also handles rather tidely. Wind noise is very low but tyre noise is considerably more excessive than my car and my car has wider wheels (225 front 245 rear, W203 c class merc).
Interior size is very good and the boot also looks to be a useful size. Stereo includes DAB and this is a nice addition.
Negatives: The door mirrors are truely woeful. Why are they almost triangular in shape rather than rectangular? The view from them if you wish to change lanes is dire and as a 35,000 mile pa driver, this would really put me off. Likewise the view out of the rear window is also poor. It is a small window and you can't see much at all when reversing, this coupled with poor side mirrors is not good. The only other negative I have noticed concerns the bonnet. I know that in modern cars you can't really see the end of the bonnet but this car is probably the worst car I have even driven for knowing where it ends. I accept that you will learn this with time.
The final matter concerns the engine in this car, a 1.8 petrol, just nowhere near enough power. I'm sure it is cheap and economical for tax (I haven;t checked though) but you really need to rev it to get it to go (and even then not very fast). It's OK at cruising on the motorway but for single A road overtaking, I think you would need quite a long run up. I don;t no how much the car weighs but I guess quite a bit as it is a big car and 1.8 with no turbo is just not enough. I'm sure that this doesn;t apply to the larger petrol engines or the turbo charged diesels.
For what it's worth and I cannot verify it, the trip computer claims I've been getting 35 MPG in mixed motoring.
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Official figures for 1.8 (from brochure):
0-60: 10.9
max: 129
mpg: urban 25.9, extra urban 47.1, combined 36.2
CO2: 184
2.0 turbo sounds more tasty - 0-60 of 7.2 and 150mph max, but 31.7mpg combined and CO2 209.
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0-60 in 10.9 seems a bit ambitious from the way it goes about it's business. My merc is a W203 2.2 auto CDi and I think that's about 0-60 in 10 seconds. The Insignia wouldn't stand a chance against my car. More importantly though, the lack of torque means you have to wring its neck to get this performance.
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