- 500,000th Insignia is a Sports Tourer with the new 2.0 BiTurbo CDTI engine
- Insignia success story continues with national and international awards
- Rüsselsheim plant combines compact and mid-size cars on one assembly line
The 500,000th Opel Insignia has left the assembly line of the Rüsselsheim plant in Germany in a ceremony attended by the Plant Director Axel Scheiben. The vehicle in question is a white Insignia Sports Tourer station wagon equipped with the state-of-the art 2.0 BiTurbo CDTI engine (143 kW/195 hp output, 400 Nm torque) which had its debut in February.
“I and all the employees here at this plant are very proud of today’s achievement. Since the Insignia’s launch in October 2008, our staff went the extra mile, “says Scheiben. “Right from the start we knew that the Insignia was a true winner. I am delighted that the 500,000th Insignia is equipped with the latest two liter BiTurbo diesel engine. The new unit was launched very recently and has already enjoyed very positive feedback from the media and customers.”
Insignia 2.0 BiTurbo CDTI: sequential double turbo and twin-intercooler system
Apart from the sequential turbo system with two different sized turbochargers, the Insignia 2.0 BiTurbo CDTI is the first time a passenger vehicle has been equipped with a twin intercooler system with two completely separate cooling circuits. Thanks to its sequential double turbo system with two charging stages, the Insignia is designed to deliver especially agile, responsive and fluid performance under acceleration. This is especially true of the Insignia Sports Tourer which when fitted with the six speed manual gearbox, Start/Stop and forward wheel drive can sprint from standstill to 100 km/h in just 8.9 seconds and reach a top speed of 225 km/h. While performance is high, fuel consumption is as low as 5.1 l/100 km and CO2 emissions only 134 g/km.
Apart from the 2.0 BiTurbo CDTI unit, the Insignia family offers a further three diesel engines and four more diesel powertrains. On the gasoline side, the new 1.4 Turbo ecoFLEX (103 kW/140 hp) is one of the most efficient engines of the midsize segment where fuel consumption is as low as 5.7 liter per 100 kilometers and 134 g/km CO2.
Insignia Success Story
Since its debut in 2008, the Insignia has won more than 50 national and international prizes, including the prestigious “Car of The Year Award 2009”. In terms of reliability, the Insignia was declared the best used car in the mid-size vehicle segment (September 2011) by the German used car watchdog, “GTÜ” (The Association for Technical Supervision). In addition, the Insignia scored a major success in the 2012 DEKRA used car report, the second time in a row. The vehicle was the segment leader for the lowest amount of faults. The praise by the car experts is also reflected in customer demand with Russia currently leading the league table in terms of sales growth. In 2011, about 150,000 Insignias were sold in Europe with the UK and Germany still the biggest markets with 46,000 and 26,000 respectively.
Of all the Insignia cars produced in Rüsselsheim around 40 percent are Sports Tourers, 40 percent hatchbacks and the remaining 20 percent of vehicles are notchbacks.
Ultra Modern Rüsselsheim Plant
The state-of-the art plant in Rüsselsheim began operating in January 2002 and is home to the only General Motors owned factory in Europe that can assemble vehicles from two segments on one assembly line: in this case compact and mid-size vehicles.
Rüsselsheim produces 60 vehicles an hour or 860 a day, among them the hatchback, notchback and Sports Tourer body styles of the Insignia as well as the five door Astra. The assembly line therefore requires a high degree of flexibility. The 770 fully automated robots on the line have been programmed to distinguish between all the different models and are able to process around 12,900 different parts used to build the Insignia. Some 3,000 thousand workers work a two-shift pattern in the plant that is one of the most modern car manufacturing plants worldwide.
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