Any car with the word ‘SuperSport’ tagged onto the back of it sounds like it’ll be mega won’t it? We had the privilege of driving the 2009 European Car of the Year winning Insignia some years back when we visited the U.K. and it was impressive. Okay, we didn’t drive the hot-to-trot, turbocharged VXR version mind you, but we’ve always thought General Motor South Africa (GMSA) missed a trick by not introducing an Opel Insignia to South Africa.
Opel fans might be regretting it even more now, as Vauxhall announce their new range-topping Insignia. The Vauxhall Insignia VXR is now replaced by the Vauxhall Insignia VXR SuperSport. It sounds like they just stuck an extra badge on the boot, but what they’ve also done is remove the speed restrictor, so it will now do 170 mph, or 272 km/h if you speak South African. Vauxhall have also dropped the price by £3 000 to £29 995, which is around R415 000 at the current exchange rate.
What all this does for the Insignia is simply allow Vauxhall to trumpet the VXR SuperSport as, “…the fastest car on sale in the UK for under £30 000.” Vauxhall have done nothing else to the car apart from removing the speed limiter, dipping the price and sticking some extra blue lettering on the car. That means, under the skin, the Brits still get all-wheel drive and a 2.8-litre V6 turbocharged EcoTec engine, which produces 238 kW and enough grunt to launch the VXR SuperSport to 100 km/h from zero in 5.6 seconds.
