• A big step up, both for style and layout
• The seats fitted to GS and Ultimate trim are fabulous
• Infotainment is slick but functionality is middling

How’s the quality and layout?

The view from behind the wheel of a new Vauxhall Grandland is a lot sleeker than before, and there’s plenty of interesting materials that help create an upmarket feel. It’s not quite as premium as a Peugeot 3008, but it is more ergonomic. There are some harder plastics dotted about, but they are buried down low. The abundance of fabric-covered surfaces do raise questions about longevity, we wonder how these surfaces will hold up over time against the onslaught of family live.

Vauxhall has designed the SUV’s ergonomics intelligently, too. Instead of moving all the controls on to the touchscreen, as some manufacturers have done, there’s a row of proper buttons for items like the air conditioning and demister. With a few configurable shortcuts assigned on the infotainment system as well, you don’t have to dive into menus as often as rivals.

Infotainment and tech

The entry-level Grandland gets a 10.0-inch touchscreen that we’ve not tested yet, but we have spent a good amount of time with the larger 16.0-inch touchscreen. This letterbox-shaped screen is the focal point of the interior, mounted high up on the dashboard to help minimise the amount of time you need to divert your attention away from the road, and teamed with a new digital gauge cluster.

Both are sleek and packed with fancy graphics and style, but that comes at the expense of legibility. The text could be larger, and the menu structure isn’t as straightforward as in the Renault Austral, for example. It also threw a couple of visual hiccups our way on our test – the radio displayed some random numbers (maybe a code of some description) on occasion, and it loved to jump out of Apple CarPlay without any prompt.

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One final nicety is the new ‘Pure’ display mode. This pares back the information on the Grandland’s infotainment screen and gauge cluster to the bare minimum to cut back on driver distraction. Anyone who owned an old Saab with its ‘Night Panel’ button will know how nice it can be to block out visual clutter, especially in the era of massive screens that illuminate everything.

Comfort

The seats, along with cheap financing rates, were the biggest selling points of the old Grandland. The AGR (a German organisation that promotes back health) approved those seats, and they’re back and better than ever in the new model.

They’re only fitted to the GS and Ultimate models and are easily the best in class. They may not be squishy and lounge-like, but the level of adjustment and support offered is tremendous. If you don’t mind spending some extra cash, they can be optioned with ventilation and massage functions, but we haven’t tried those yet. As we’ll explain on the next page, you’ll quickly discover the benefit of these seats the moment you hit a big pothole.