Test: Opel Insignia Country Tourer, Volvo V90 Cross Country

Dino Eisele

Insignia CT versus V90 CC

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29.10.2018

• Body and costs
• Equipment and comfort
• technology check: pros and cons
• Drive and driving behavior
• Conclusion

E some provable combination hang to explain Swedish peculiarities are still missing. For example, whether the world's highest per capita cinnamon consumption can be explained by the fact that all the melancholy crime detective agents there try to lighten their mood with sweet cinnamon rolls. Or whether so many people stumble over coffee tables in the darkness of long winter days that there is such a high need for inexpensive tables that you can screw together yourself. Another peculiarity might explain the existence of the Volvo V90 CC.

In Sweden there are statistically only 38 meters of asphalt road per car, but with 117 meters more than three times as much legally passable gravel road. In our romantic imagination, such routes always lead to lonely lakes with trees around them and an island in the middle. Volvo has always built cars for such roads. But the company had barely existed for 70 years when marketing noticed that it could become a trendsetter. In 1997 they called the higher-set four-wheel drive version of the V70 Cross Country. After Audi, VW, Skoda and Mercedes took up the idea, Opel's Insignia got ready for a gravel life. Which is not so easy for us, after all, in Germany you are almost never allowed to turn off the 644,000 km of asphalt road onto Feldwaldwiesenwege.

Dino Eisele

Stylish and stately furnished interior in the Volvo. In general, the furnishings look a bit more classy than in the Insignia.

The Swedes have been shifting to the portrait touchscreen since the current XC90. In the last four and a half years we've had two or three dozen Volvo cars here, and we currently have a V90 T8 for an endurance test with us. We even picked it up in Gothenburg and drove all the way home. So if we write again that the operation is cumbersome and annoying, it is not due to a lack of familiarization. But on the system with small buttons, overloaded menus and a complicated basic structure. So often we mistyped before we find the touch surface in the sound system's menu that enables the “Göteborg Konserthuset” sound experience to be activated. And, friends, that rocks the V90.

Of course also in the back rows: on the thickly padded rear bench, where passengers have five centimeters more standard seating space than in the Opel. The seat back can be folded down in two parts to create a level, plus there is a small hatch. The Insignia can do that even better. His back seat foldsin three parts, with 6.5 cm more external length, it packs 139 liters more maximum volume.

Anyone who is still complaining that after the Omega Caravan there was no longer a large station wagon at Opel should go for the Insignia look at. It may lack the bulkiness at the rear, which is conducive to bulky goods, but it is the best Opel that has ever existed. And possibly there ever will have been when the next generation with PSA technology arrives. The Insignia sets standards with brilliant matrix LED light, full projection head-up display and the chassis with adaptive dampers in the PSA Group - as well as in its price class with high-quality technology at an affordable rate.

A lot of equipment alone doesn't make a good car, but the basis of the Insignia is convincing. Although space efficiency is not one of its main strengths, it creates an impressive amount of space over a length of five meters. On the comfortable back seat, the legroom doesn't go as far into the lavish as in the Volvo. At the front it is as unrestricted as in the V90 on the multi-adjustable, strong AGR comfort seats - and because of the seven centimeters lower seating position, it is also deeper and more intimately integrated.

Dino Eisele

Although space efficiency is not one of its main strengths, the Insignia creates plenty of space over its five meters length.