Vauxhall Insignia Grand Sport

It’s impossible to consider the arrival of the all-new Insignia without briefly reflecting on the tribulations of Vauxhall and its parent, Opel.

The latest model is, after all, a significant cog in a global machine – designed and developed in Europe yet also sold in North America and China as the Buick Regal.

Consequently, its lifecycle is likely to be defined by the upheaval of a brand in flux, as new owner PSA Group asserts control over its unwieldy acquisition from General Motors and eventually gets around to segregating asset from redundancy.

In that light, it’s quite possible to view the Insignia as a considerable virtue of the procurement.

Imperfect though the outgoing version was, it finished a stronger prospect than it started in the UK and proved a considerable success even when faced with the oft-mentioned squeeze of this class, the D-segment, from all sides.

Certainly, it overshadowed the comparatively puny impact made by PSA’s own contenders and counted only the likes of the Ford Mondeo and Volkswagen Passat as direct rivals in terms of size and prominence.

Both of those admittedly much newer models made the outgoing Insignia look every bit as old as nearly 10 years on sale suggested it was, though.

Updates kept the car’s nose above water, but it was still too heavy, too flaccid to drive, too muddled inside and too drab to be thought of with much enthusiasm beyond its cadre of business users.

The new version, dubbed Grand Sport in hatchback format, is a conspicuously handsome attempt to address all of those faults. It promises to be lighter, leaner and better thought out than the car it replaces.

Historically, it’ll represent one of General Motors’ last half dozen or so solo rolls of the dice in Europe. Topically, it’ll become one of the most recognisable cars on British roads.

We drove a 2.0 Turbo D in SRi VX-Line Nav trim to assess its worthiness for either accolade.

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