New Vauxhall Crossland X Review

Published Date: 16th Sep 2019

The Crossland X is Vauxhall’s SUV-like family car that offers lots of practicality and room on the inside along with an excellent frugal engine line-up.  It also offers plenty of trim-levels, good levels of equipment, even on entry-level models and plenty of personalisation options.

With the ever-increasing demand for Crossover and SUV-like vehicles, the Crossland X fills the gap in demand for a family car where the Vauxhall Meriva, a traditional MPV may be less appealing.  It’s the smaller sibling of the Vauxhall Grandland X and as a more compact Crossover/SUV-like family car it will compete with vehicles like the Renault Captur and the Mazda CX-3

Highlights:

• Exterior styling blends SUV-like looks with some traditional family car traits
• Interior is spacious and practical with an excellent infotainment system
• Good choice of engines offer low running costs
• Crossland X offers excellent levels of equipment even on entry-level models

 

Vauxhall Crossland X Exterior Styling

Compared with the traditional MPV looks of vehicles like the Meriva, the Crossland X offers an altogether smarter looking alternative with rugged SUV styling cues, like moulded wheel arches and protective side moulding combined with hints of a traditional family car.

It’s a Crossover, lets make that clear which means it built on a traditional passenger vehicle platform but with built up suspension and a higher driving position. As a family car it offers the best of both worlds and it is exactly the type of family vehicle that are currently flying out of showrooms in the UK in increasing numbers.
 

Vauxhall Crossland X Interior

The interior is all about practicality and space, yes there are some soft touch materials (the top of the dashboard for example) but you will also find plenty of hard plastic materials, not necessarily a bad thing if you have small children splashing drinks and throwing food around.

The dashboard is neat and well-organised, with the impressive touchscreen infotainment system the centre-piece (we’ll talk more about this shortly). Driver visibility is also very good, partly thanks to the high driving position.

Practicality and space are the end-goal here for Vauxhall with the Crossland X, and they’ve hit the sweet spot. Thanks to the high roofline and a clever design it feels very spacious inside and will be more than enough for most families. There’s also plenty of clever little storage ideas and a generous boot which should trump most of the competition (410 litres with the split-folding rear seats up).

 

Vauxhall Crossland X Engines

You get plenty of solid engine options thanks to tried and tested powertrains that are the product of an alliance with Peugeot/Citroen.

The Crossland X is built on the same platform as the Peugeot 2008 and so it shares a similar engine-range.

The entry-level engine is a 80bhp petrol, here you are restricted to manual transmission and there’s no start/stop technology, it can also feel a bit under-powered, especially on motorways or when carrying a full-load.

We like the more powerful 1.2 petrol (108bhp) which feels good on motorways and around-town, it comes with manual or automatic transmission. Its nippy enough (0-62mph in about 10.5 seconds) and economy figures are good (fuel economy of up to 58.9mpg and CO2 emissions as low as 109g/km).

A more powerful 128bhp petrol engine is also available, but noticeable performance gains are marginal and running costs take a hit, in our opinion it isn’t worth the additional cost.

With Vauxhall expecting the Crossland X to be a big hit as a family car, running costs are a big consideration and diesels will still be popular. The most frugal diesel is the 1.6-litre (98bhp), Vauxhall claim it can do up to 76.3mpg and CO2 emissions as low as 93g/km (based on manual transmission and depending on your configuration). Overall, we still prefer the more refined and quieter 1.2 petrol (108bhp) which still offers more than respectable economy figures for a petrol unit.

 

Vauxhall Crossland X Equipment Levels & Models

The Crossland X offer plenty of equipment and six trim-levels, as you get to higher-grade models it does start to get a bit pricey but the good thing here is, even entry-level models have pretty generous levels of equipment.

The entry-level SE model offers levels of equipment way beyond expectations for a so-called entry-level model. It features 16-inch alloy wheels, automatic lights, daytime running lights, front fog lights, cruise control with speed limiter/intelligent speed adaption. Other driver aids include a lane departure warning system and traffic sign recognition. Front and rear parking sensors can be added as an option for around £480 and are standard on higher-grade models

Inside there’s also front and rear one touch electric windows and electronic climate control for convenience and comfort. The centre-piece of the dash is the impressive 7-inch touchscreen infotainment system with Bluetooth for hands-free phone calls/music streaming and steering wheel mounted controls.

There’s no sat nav on entry-level models but with both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay support you can use your favourite sat nav app from your phone direct to the infotainment screen.  If built-in sat nav is a deal-breaker you can look at one of the ‘Nav’ trims. The SE Nav for example just adds sat nav to the SE trim-level, the same applies to Sport Nav, Tech Line Nav and Elite Nav for their respective namesakes.

Also integrated into the infotainment system is Vauxhall’s OnStar service, which uses GPS and communication services to perform a number of useful tasks. In the event of an accident it can automatically call the emergency services and send the vehicle’s exact location. The same location technology can also help the police locate the car in the event of it being stolen and it can also immobilise the stolen vehicle once the engine has been turned off.

The OnStar service can also diagnose mechanical and electronic issues with the vehicle and it provides WIFI hotspot for passengers.

If your budget can stretch beyond the entry-level model our pick is the Crossland X Business Edition Nav which adds some extra equipment to the SE model spec like integrated 3D Sat Nav (making the infotainment system even more impressive) and rear parking sensors.

As you move up the model range you get additional goodies like contrasting roof colours, more driver aids and tech as standard, larger 17-inch alloy wheels, front sports seats, a premium sound system and leather interior on top-grade models.

You can compare all Vauxhall Crossland X models and the latest deals here.