Vauxhall Grandland X, car review: A remarkably unremarkable car

Here we go again, I thought, when I copped eyes on my Vauxhall Grandland X. Crossover SUV? Tick. Finished in fashionable white? Tick. Name derived from some permutation on the words “cross”, “four”, “grand”, “land” or “drive”, ie the ones that haven’t actually been copyrighted by Land Rover or Toyota? Tick. High driving position? Tick. Inoffensive inside and out? Tick Dead body in the boot? Tick.

Well, obviously not the dead body, but at least it would give me few stories to tell, about how it got there, how I explained it away to the police, what the Russian connection was, that sort of thing. I mean, there is room enough in the boot for a dead body, in case you were wondering.

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As it is, the Grandland X is very difficult to get worked up about. I haven’t got much to say about it, which is a bit of a cop out, indeed an excuse for laziness. I recall that some years ago Jeremy Clarkson reviewed the first Vauxhall Vectra, and he, as you might remember, just meandered around it shrugging and sighing and sitting down and getting up again and not saying a darn thing. His point was obvious.

I wouldn’t dream of reprising that particular trick (ie stealing rather a smart bit of journalism). From my point of view the fact that we live in an age of lookalike unremarkable cars is a cause for celebration, at least in one sense. Some of us remember the technological variety of a previous age of motoring, where a budget buyer would be presented with a choice of, say, a rear-engined rear-drive VW Beetle, a front-engine front-drive Mini, a three-wheeler Reliant Robin, a Citroen 2CV and a Lada. All very different, all characterful in their odd ways and all, despite the VW’s reputation, rather frail and prone to fail, one way or another. The Grandland X, by contrast, is space age stuff, and a boon to mankind in its range of abilities for the price. I’ll not mention Vauxhall’s (allegedly) self-combusting Zafiras, an exception to their usual rule of high quality.

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That the British car market improved so much for consumers in recent decades has a lot to do with the revival of Vauxhall, a brand once synonymous with rust and unreliability but, with various generations of Cavaliers, Corsas, Vectras and Astras, one that became, believe it or not, actually desirable. If your dad took you to school in a Cavalier SRi, I may say, you got some respect.

So what about turning up on the school run in a Grandland X, then? Well, not so much, maybe, but then again you oughtn’t to get laughed at either. As I say, unremarkable transport for the family. Does what it says on the tin, that sort of thing. It’s telling that one of the most popular colours for new cars right now is this solid shade of white, because cars are, like it or not, increasingly being treated and marketed as white goods. Most of the car companies fret that younger buyers in particular aren’t much interested in driving pleasure or the mystique that the marketing men try to endow on these machines. The motor car, after a century of delighting us, is slowly becoming deglamourised. The process of electrification and increasingly autonomous operation (“driverless cars”) might even extinguish any trace of romance form the world of motoring.

Until then, we have the Grandland X. It could, more or less, pass for any of its current rivals – a Ford Kuga, Kia Sportage, Nissan Qashqai or Seat Ateca, say. On the spectrum between actual-SUV-that-can-handle-the-rough-stuff, say a Subaru XV, and total-fraud-two-wheel-drive-car at the other, like a Citroen C3 Aircoss (still a nice car, mind), then the Grandland is towards the soft-roading end of the chart. It’s got the ground clearance and some of those important driving aids to help you get down those steep hills you find on the way in to every branch of Waitrose, but not much else.

Then again, who cares? No one much ever uses these things off road, and, as I say, as long as they go, stop, and handle tolerably well, look the part and are affordable on a PCP then, sorry to say, they are very largely indistinguishable.

But which would I go for, if I had to? In fact I’d certainly consider the Grandland X. Vauxhall have done a very good job of making their medium-sized SUV habitable. It is roomy enough to take the contents of a spare room, as I discovered (no corpse though), and I liked the automatic electric tailgate. The engineering on the car is very good indeed, much of it done by Vauxhall’s affiliate Opel in Germany.

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And thereby hangs a corporate tail. For Vauxhall/Opel, as GM Europe, partnered up with Peugeot to share the work, and cost, of developing an SUV platform, and the Grandland’s underpinnings can also be found in the Peugeot 3008. Now that Peugeot have gone the whole hog and bought Vauxhall/Opel, the 3008 is now a sister, an in-house competitor to the Grandland X. And look at what Peugeot managed to do with the 3008 – plenty of design flair inside and out and much more distinctive look and, even, quality feel. The Vauxhall has better sat nav, I can confirm, and offers superior value for money, but I just wonder how much more Vauxhall/Opel could have made of their product if they had just decided to be a little avant-garde and original (which wouldn’t necessarily have cost any more to develop or manufacture). Like the current Ford Ka and Fiat 500, also the same car underneath and actually made on the same production line, you can see what a difference is sales a bit of imagination and style can yield.

Grandlands start at a bit over £20,000 and there are affordable PCP plans around that can take them well within many a family’s budget. For that you will get adaptive cruise control, colour reversing cameras, road sign recognition, air conditioning and a lane departure warning as standard. There’s the usual range of modern and efficient diesel and petrol units, plus proper automatic and manual gearboxes, but no electric or hybrid options, I’m sorry to say.

Anyway, I think I’ve exhausted all I can usefully say about the Grandland X, this fine but remarkably unremarkable car.