If you visit Buick’s US website, you’ll discover the Regal is no longer available in the country in any of its forms. At the other side of the big pond, however, the model continues its life as the Opel Insignia, one of the company’s last models based on a General Motors platform. Motor1.com's Turkey edition decided to put the latest Insignia to the test and see how well it can perform in the so-called moose test.
For the uninitiated, the Insignia family was facelifted in December 2019 and a few weeks later, the performance GSi model also received a refresh (see the related links below). The vehicle remains one of the popular choices in the European D-segment, though that segment has been shrinking in the last few years. Nevertheless, the Insignia remains Opel’s flagship offering on the Old continent and it is interesting to see how good it is in the moose test.
Our Turkish colleagues took an example powered by a 1.5-liter diesel engine for the test. This unit has 120 horsepower (90 kilowatts) and 221 pound-feet (300 Newton-meters) of torque delivered to the front wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox. This particular example weighs 3,395 pounds (1,540 kilograms) and rides on 18-inch wheels with Bridgestone Turanza T005s tires in 245/45 size. The air temperature during the test was 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius).
The test started at a speed of 48 miles per hour (78 kilometers per hour) and the Insignia remained very balanced - actually, more balanced than what our colleagues expected. The D-segment liftback remained safe with just a little input from the electronic stability system. Surprisingly, the car remained stable even at 50 mph (80 kph) with the only difference being the earlier activation of the ESP.
