What kind of travel is the Opel Insignia Country Tourer suitable for?

In one of the most expensive countries in the world - Norway - you can relax relatively inexpensively. You should avoid large hotels, cook on your own, and choose a comfortable but economical car for transport - such as an Opel Insignia Country Tourer with a diesel engine.

The back row is more spacious than in a sedan, the sloping roof does not interfere

Photo: Kommersant / Ilya Zinoviev / buy photo

There is a radar hidden in the front grille, sensors and cameras in the windshield - the car can monitor the road itself

Photo: Kommersant / Ilya Zinoviev / buy photo

The huge curved tailgate eats up about 30 cm of trunk space

Photo: Kommersant / Ilya Zinoviev / buy photo

You feel more relaxed about the vagaries of weather in the mountains if the car has permanent all-wheel drive

Photo: Kommersant / Ilya Zinoviev / buy photo

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Increased ground clearance to 175 mm and protective plastic are the main external differences of the Country Tourer

Photo: Kommersant / Ilya Zinoviev / buy photo

The slowness and incomprehensibility of the navigation system spoils the impression of the new interface

Photo: Kommersant / Ilya Zinoviev / buy photo

You can write an address with your finger on the touchpad - the system recognizes the letters

Photo: Kommersant / Ilya Zinoviev / buy photo

The back row is more spacious than in a sedan, the sloping roof does not interfere

Photo: Kommersant / Ilya Zinoviev / buy photo

There is a radar hidden in the front grille, sensors and cameras in the windshield - the car can monitor the road itself

Photo: Kommersant / Ilya Zinoviev / buy photo

The huge curved tailgate eats up about 30 cm of trunk space

Photo: Kommersant / Ilya Zinoviev / buy photo

You feel more relaxed about the vagaries of weather in the mountains if the car has permanent all-wheel drive

Photo: Kommersant / Ilya Zinoviev / buy photo

ILYA ZINOVIEV

Savings oblige

If it weren't for this gas station, everything would be just great. Judge for yourself: almost two thousand kilometers have been covered, the goal is just a short distance away, the weather is excellent. And then this vile mechanism brazenly stole 500 crowns from a credit card (by the way, as much as 2,500 rubles at the exchange rate), and did not pour a drop of diesel. Of course, I myself am partly to blame: I tried, without knowing Swedish, to communicate with this insidious piece of hardware. However, the guy from the next car, called to help, despite being a Swede, also couldn’t deal with the automation: I don’t know, he says, what’s the matter, go to the next pump and pay to the cashier. As a result, the cash register charged me another 560 coins.

But I was determined to save money this time. Last year we went to the Arctic Ocean in a defiantly red BMW 640i convertible; this year, for a trip to the Norwegian Arctic, we preferred the more economical Opel Insignia Country Tourer in a calm white color. Last year, the bill was liters of expensive premium gasoline; this year we are counting the European national fuel - diesel. Then we did not miss the chance to press the pedal properly and show everyone what 320 Bavarian “horses” are capable of; now we are modestly driving in the traffic, content with the modest dynamics of the 163-horsepower two-liter engine.

The most unpleasant and unpredictable part of the journey - from Moscow to St. Petersburg - was overcome by train, fortunately now you can take the car with you by placing it in a special luggage car-carrier. In the morning, "Sapsan" is met by a taxi minibus, a few minutes among the warehouses and railway tracks - and again behind the wheel, towards Vyborg, to the "Brusnichnoye" checkpoint. The first overnight stay is in Finnish Mikkel, the second is on the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia in Oulu, which means we have time to have lunch and take a walk, we drive slowly, 500-600 km a day.

On the third day we cross the Arctic Circle near the Swedish city of Jokmokk. The average speed, according to the on-board computer, is 72 km/h, the average fuel consumption is 6.2 liters per 100 km.

This trip is not the first test drive of the Opel Insignia. About two years ago we already tested a gasoline station wagon, and this spring we tested an updated sedan. Nevertheless, the Country Tourer, a new model, is not just a station wagon, but an all-wheel drive station wagon-crossover with increased ground clearance to 175 mm and a protective plastic body kit all around. Otherwise, our car is almost exactly the same as the Insignia, the most modern and best-equipped Opel model on the market.

Speaking of equipment, I can’t help but compare our current car with last year’s BMW, which was packed to the brim with options. It is clear that these cars are from different price segments, but still - what is missing from the Country Tourer that was in the Bavarian convertible? Offhand: only the massage functions of the front seats and a head-up display are missing, everything else seems to be present.

Active cruise control, collision avoidance systems, lane control, and blind spot scanning are available. Thanks to all these useful functions, the process of smooth movement on the narrow roads of Northern Europe was, one might say, automated. There is also a high-resolution multifunction color display that replaces the usual dashboard, another larger touchscreen display for navigation and entertainment, and a touchpad with feedback for control. Communicating on the road with screens and touch surfaces turned out to be more convenient and safer than with conventional buttons. Excellent leather chairs with electrical adjustments, pronounced lateral and lumbar support, heating and electric ventilation are available. These seats, approved by the German Orthopedic Association, seemed overly cramped and hard when we first met them in the spring, but they performed remarkably well on a long journey, saving us from fatigue. And, of course, an entertainment system with good acoustics from BOSE. She perfectly connected all our musical gadgets without any wires and kept us awake even in the middle of nowhere, when there were no radio stations left on the air.

Our car also had a traffic sign recognition system - as it turned out, a very useful thing. When you change countries every day, get confused about the accepted speed limits, and there is such beauty all around, a road sign may go unnoticed. But not for the on-board system: it is not distracted by reindeer, snow-capped mountain peaks and clouds crawling below, so it sees all the signs and always knows the current speed limit and displays it on the dashboard.

The only thing that could not be appreciated in the new Opel Insignia Country Tourer is the headlight control system. It can switch the high and low beam itself, turn on the LED running lights and highlight the cornering area, but we didn’t find all this useful. In the regions where we went, it was still a polar day - the sun set somewhere at midnight, but was far from hiding - and at two or three o'clock in the morning it came out again.

A car with an icy temperament

The weather in Arctic Norway is quite harsh even in summer. In the Lofoten Islands, where we eventually arrived, the average August temperature is about 16 degrees, but we were lucky - it was as much as 22. However, the weather here is very changeable, and clear skies can give way to rain at one moment. We did not regret that we drove the all-wheel drive Country Tourer: you drive into a tunnel under the bright sun, and after a few kilometers you emerge into a dense wall of rain. And sometimes it happens in the snow.

The roads are almost perfect, but very narrow, and the ups and downs are quite steep. In some places you have to literally squeeze into special pockets to let oncoming traffic pass; such places are marked with special signs. Here and there there are special sites - exits from the road, so that you can get out of the car, stand, admire, and breathe in the Atlantic air near the giant fjords. If clearance allows, you can get very close to the water - there are no fences, on the contrary, there are plenty of specially equipped sites for tents and campers. The beaches are gorgeous, the sand is white, the only pity is that the water is very cold.

We got here not without incident - the navigator was helpful. The fact is that the Country Tourer's navigation system has a non-standard algorithm for entering addresses, and I have, on principle, not taken paper maps on the road for many years now. The system in the car does not allow you to sequentially select a country, city, street and house on it; it works with the entire address, like a search engine on the Internet. It would seem that this is even more convenient, but the trouble is that you never know in what sequence and in what language to write the address so that the Opel navigation understands it. Some things must be entered exclusively in Cyrillic, some in Latin, sometimes you need to indicate the country, sometimes you don’t, otherwise the machine will mistake it for a street or city. But the most incomprehensible thing is how to enter an address in Norwegian if the on-screen keyboard does not have the necessary characters. I tried changing the interface language to Norwegian, everything became even more incomprehensible, but the necessary characters like “o” and “?” never showed up. And how, excuse me, should I enter a request if I need Sildpollnes Sjocamp in the town of Svolv?r? A simple navigator in a smartphone solves this problem without any tricks, but a large and complex built-in navigation system that can recognize speech and accept handwritten input does not.

Another problem on the trip was the trunk. It sounds strange, but for a station wagon almost five meters long, it turned out to be a bit cramped. It would seem that, with a volume of 540 liters, it is not inferior to the luggage compartments of its competitors, although in reality the difference is quite noticeable: the luggage of two people plus an electric boat motor with a battery had to be partially placed in the cabin. And the whole problem, in my opinion, is the irrational use of space for the sake of design: the back door of the Country Tourer, due to its shape, eats up too much space. Approximately 30-40 cm in length of the trunk is not used at all; this space is occupied by a cunningly curved huge and massive structure of inhuman thickness.

And, of course, speaking about the shortcomings, I cannot help but mention the dynamics of the car with a 163-horsepower diesel engine. For cold Northern Europe, for the icy Scandinavian temperament, this engine is perfect, even if the calm and smooth Touring driving mode is selected. But when the lakes and pines of Southern Finland are already flashing outside the window, and the guys on the road are getting hotter with every kilometer, only the Sport button helps to match the situation. As for our native latitudes, even a button is not enough, our drivers have such an explosive character. That’s why we preferred to return by train with a car - both the car and our nerves are safer, and few cars can compete with the speed of a train on the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway. Perhaps the Opel Insignia Country Tourer with a 249-horsepower turbocharged gasoline engine - there is such a version.

If I ever travel to another part of the world again, I’ll have to try it. Gasoline, of course, is more expensive than diesel in Europe, and such a car has a better appetite; you’ll have to get a favor from that Swedish gas station. I remember him and I’m not going to forgive him.

Opel Insignia Country Tourer 2.0 CDTI 4x4

Dimensions, length / width / height (mm) 4920/1856/1526

All-wheel drive

Engine, turbodiesel type

Volume, l 2.0

Power, l. With. 163

Torque, Nm 350

Transmission 6-speed Automatic transmission

Price from (thousand rubles) 1470

Possible competitors of the Opel Insignia Country Tourer 2.0 CDTI 4x4

ModelEngine/transmissionPrice in Moscow
from (thousand rubles)

Subaru Outback 2.5 CVT	gasoline 2.5 l (167 hp) / CVT	1455
Volvo XC 70 D4 AWD	diesel 2.4 l (180 hp) / automatic transmission	1519
VW Passat Alltrack	gasoline 2.0 l (210 hp) / automatic transmission	1614

How much does the Opel Insignia Country Tourer cost?

PAYMENT FOR TRAVEL

The most affordable Opel Insignia Country Tourer is front-wheel drive, it costs from 1.37 million rubles. All-wheel drive version with 163 hp diesel engine. With. — from 1.47 million rubles. The most expensive modification is the petrol 249-horsepower Country Tourer - from 1.54 million rubles. The car in our market is offered exclusively with an automatic 6-speed transmission. The basic equipment is rich, few options are offered, for example: leather upholstery (55-90 thousand rubles), panoramic roof (37 thousand rubles), BOSE audio system (25 thousand rubles), navigation (15 thousand rubles) .), a package including adaptive cruise control, automatic light control and a traffic sign recognition system (40 thousand rubles). The most equipped test car costs 1.659 million rubles.

Warranty - 3 years or 100 thousand km. The service interval is determined by the readings of the on-board computer. The cost of the first maintenance is 10-15 thousand rubles. First year CASCO - 60-70 thousand rubles, compulsory motor liability insurance - 6336 rubles, transport tax - 6194 rubles.

The total mileage during the test was about 5 thousand km, of which 4 thousand km were in Europe. Average consumption ranged from 6 liters of diesel fuel per 100 km (flat roads in Finland and Sweden) to 8.5 liters (mountain roads in Norway). Average consumption in Russia (mainly country driving) is 8.9 liters per 100 km.

The average cost of diesel fuel in Finland is €1.49 per liter, in northern Sweden – €1.6 per liter, in Arctic Norway – €1.8 per liter.

The cost of transporting a car by train from Moscow to St. Petersburg is 10.2 thousand rubles.

Station wagon at the end of the world