Vauxhall Signum (facelift) 3.0 V6 CDTi Design


Signum - first look
We had been looking to replace our Mazda 626 diesel estate in March this year (2007), after a trip to the last motor show we had decided on the Hyundai Sonata.
Our local Hyundai dealer had a manual in, so we popped over for a test drive, however on arrival we decided that the Sonata didn't look as nice as it did!

Then followed 2 hours of visiting various dealers, none of who's car's we liked...

Getting despairing of the situation we wandered over to the Vauxhall dealer, despite us both saying we never have one (after owning a Nova and a Cavalier many, many moons ago). I immediately discounted the Astra and Vectra estates, but remembered that the Signum was kind of estate-ish. The dealer had a nice example of a 1.9 150ps, with an Irmscher body kit.
It looked great and the other half liked it too. The dealer was too busy to allow us a test drive, so we drove to the next nearest dealer to see if we could fare better. They didn't have a 150, but allowed us to look inside a 120ps before asking if we'd like a test drive in it, or the 3.0l diesel. 3 litre? Didn't know they did one!

After a half-hour drive we were very surprised by the car and how much better the Vauxhall gearbox was to what we had previously experienced. We took the 120ps model out for comparison and that was an immediate 'no'

I'll skip past the bit when I exercised my excellent haggling skills and tell you that we collected the car this morning!

Below are the first pics of the car (with phone), taken on Monday.