vauxhall insignia 2013 - the 140 bhp or 163

[garyhumphreys]

I am definitely going to buy an insignia hatchback for towing my caravan but not sure if the 140ps engine has enough power to pull a 1435kg van. Can anyone help?
GARY

 

[WoodlandsCamper]

I've recently downsized from a Vectra 1.9 150PS to an Astra 1.7 130PS, both towing 1210kg. The reduction in power is very noticeable and higher fuel consumption in 130PS. Go for 163PS.

 

[seth1]

Anything will tow anything.Just depends how fast you want to get on your hols.But even so it wont save masses of time.Looking at it another way perhaps the 140 has enough grunt to hold 60mph uphill,if so is there a need for more hp.20hp will make very little difference in terms of pulling power.As an example my old car was 140hp,present is 230hp both diesel.On a particular drag out of Cornwall the present car is 20mph quicker up the hill than the old one.Thats it.

 

[DeliDave_]

http://carleasingmadesimple.com/business-car-leasing/vauxhall/insignia/torque-nm/
It seems they both have same 350 Nm torque ,I pull a 1500kg van with a 130ps Galaxy when my I800 needs break and its not at all slow and probably Galaxy is a lot heavier than Insignia.

 

[ProfJohnL]

I am definitely going to buy an insignia hatchback for towing my caravan but not sure if the 140ps engine has enough power to pull a 1435kg van. Can anyone help?
GARY

Hello Gary,
The short and simple answer is YES the 140ps Insignia will to the 1435Kg caravan. The more complex answer is will it meet your expectations or will it just meet your needs?

Which ever car and engine you go for, you cannot escape the fact that by virtually doubling the weight of the solo car you are going to notice a considerable drop off in performance. Is that going to be a problem? In real life the majority of cars have capabilities which vastly exceed the limitations of traffic movement, and in practice we rarely utilise the full potential of the car. So by adding the caravan, will it still be able keep up?

In the not so distant past most cars used petrol rather than diesel. It is usually the case that petrol engines develop most of their torque and power at towards the top of their rev range, so to make sure there was enough torque to get a car and caravan moving the industry came up with the suggestion of 40bhp per ton of total weight. However the game changer has been rise of the diesel cars.

Diesel was the king in terms of practical fuel economy, but also they had an inherent characteristic which made them very popular with the haulage industry. Torque at low engine speeds. If you were to look at the specifications of LGV and HGV you will see that a diesel with only 310bhp is being used to move 44 tonnes That gives only 7bhp per tonne! In fairness some units go up to 500bhp which is still only 11bhp per tonne.

To get the same performance in an HGV using pertrol engines I suspect you would be looking towards the 1000 to 1500bhp, simply because of the difference in torque characteristics.

So with the industries suggestion of 40bhp per ton based on petrol engines, it is perfectly reasonable to look for a lower bhp when considering diesels, and especially when its a turbo diesel which further enhances the torque at low rpm. My estimation is that you will get perfectly acceptable ( I.e not being so slow as to hold traffic up) performance with a TD of 30 to 35bhp per tonne. Anything more is a bonus but is probably not going to improve journey times which are more often than not dictated by other traffic of speed limits.

 

[RogerL]

I accept John's point that the original 40 bhp/tonne was established before the days of turbo diesels - however the popularity of turbo-diesel solo, never mind towing, is that their power outputs are very similar to non-turbo petrol engines of similar capacity as well as their obvious economy advantage.

In my opinion, anything much less than 40bhp/ton (or tonne) will leave you struggling to maintain or regain speed on any up gradients - where power matters, not torque.

My current outfit, with good power/torque and only towing at 74%, has a power-to-weight of 50 PS / tonne - it does all right but I wouldn't like to be down at 30 for one minute.

 

[seth1]

John although i agree with you,your camparison is a bit hit and miss.Ive never come across an hgv running 44t with 310hp.Many,many years ago,late 60, early 70,s operators did run with around 300hp at 32t.Back then this was considered high powered.Even now a 500hp hgv running at 44t crawls up the m62 at 25 to 30 mph at the top and a major thing not to forget is hgv,s or mostly either 12 or 16 speed.A long time ago i done some tests on a vehicle were we replaced a 200hp(201) engine with a 400hp(399) engine with a gross wieght of 32t.Both engines tested on the same hill at the same wieght.The result was the larger engine was only 10mph faster up the same hill.Quite surprising i thought.

 

[ProfJohnL]

Hello Seth,
I did check the IVECO website, and I thought they were offering a 310 bhp 44T, I may has misinterpreted the offer, but it is the general principal I was trying to illustrate and looking at the bhp/tonne offers even for the higher out put trucks they are much smaller than most cars.

 

[seth1]

Yes John you are correct.

 

[seth1]

Also as so many posts in the past have mentioned,taking the HGV as an example even though the power is low in relation to wieght, the torque is high.The average 44t tractor now on average has 2500nm of torque.After driving similar vehicles,a matched car and caravan is far quicker without any doubt.

 

[ProfJohnL]

Hi Roger,

I think we have all become drugged with the pursuit of high powered cars, yet if we really examine how we can use them, with the exception of a few special cases we don't really need such high performance vehicles. And before you accuse me of trying to get everyone to down size, I'm not I am merely pointing out the realities.

The OP's asks:-

"but not sure if the 140ps engine has enough power to pull a 1435kg van. Can anyone help?"

He is describing a need as opposed to the desire for the higher output engine, Without doubt the 140 will haul the caravan and in the majority of traffic conditions maintain adequate or legal speeds.

Ok if you have a caravan and you meet an incline, if its long or particularly steep and you need to drop a cog or even lose some speed, many main roads now have a passing lane so you're not holding other traffic up.
Your on holiday so whats the hurry?

I know this is an oversimplification and there are other factors the reader may want to play a part of the decision making, economy possibly being one, but in the context of the OP's question, I think I have provided a reasonably balanced response.

 

[xtrailman]

Personally I think once you have towed with more power its difficult to think of driving with less, towing and solo driving is much more pleasurable with more power.

Its only economics that prevents a lot of people settling for less.

One of the best engines in the Insignia range is the 2L petrol, but it not the most economical, plenty of torque over a wide range.

I have towed 1333kg with a 134bhp diesel rated to tow 2000kg, and it towed ok, but I also towed the same caravan with a 180bhp turbo petrol and it was noticeably quicker, just used more fuel.

 

[WoodlandsCamper]

Personally I think once you have towed with more power its difficult to think of driving with less, towing and solo driving is much more pleasurable with more power.

Its only economics that prevents a lot of people settling for less.

One of the best engines in the Insignia range is the 2L petrol, but it not the most economical, plenty of torque over a wide range.

I have towed 1333kg with a 134bhp diesel rated to tow 2000kg, and it towed ok, but I also towed the same caravan with a 180bhp turbo petrol and it was noticeably quicker, just used more fuel.

Bigger/more powerful is not necessarily thirstier. As mentioned earlier in the thread, for the same caravan, my previous 1.9 150PS Vectra was more economical than the current 1.7 130PS Astra. The bigger more powerful engine didn't work as hard.

 

[xtrailman]

It would be difficult to find a 180bhp petrol that uses less fuel than a 134bhp diesel.

Modern turbo petrols are now a real alternative to PDF diesels, but still lag behind in emission and economy.

I agree with what you say about smaller engines not always being as economical, I found that out when i replaced a 1200cc petrol engine into the same car with a 1500cc, I could get 40mpg on a run with the larger engine, but only 37mpg with the 1200cc.

 

[RogerL]

Modern turbo petrols are now a real alternative to PDF diesels, but still lag behind in emission and economy.

Emissions are more than the CO2 that Europe has been obsessed with for the last couple of decades - particulates, which cause cancer, and NOx, which causes lung disease, are now being seen as far more harmful than CO2 and as those limits are tightened down the turbo-petrol will come into it's own as it's particulates and NOx emissions are much lower than any diesel.

Any technical changes to diesels to reduce particulates and NOx will involve substantial extra equipment on the car, at the consumers expense.

On economy, diesels are still better but on the emissions that matter, they're worse.