Written by Graham King Published: 9 October 2024

• Ample room up front
• Reasonable in the back
• Most models have a big boot

How much space is there?

The Vauxhall Grandland’s passenger space can best be summed up as ‘adequate.’ It’s plenty spacious enough from most families but doesn’t particularly stand out, unlike some of its rivals.

The front seats offer plenty of leg, head and shoulder room, and there’s a relatively wide centre console so driver and passenger are unlikely to feel crowded. In the back, we found that a five-foot-ten passenger can sit behind a driver of the same height with a couple of inches of knee room to spare – enough to feel spacious but not enough to truly relax. There’s plenty of headroom, though.

The rear bench has three seatbelts, but it’s a little too narrow for a full complement of adults. At least the back doors open quite wide and the seat is a good height for lifting children in and out. Regardless, if rear seat space is your main priority, you’d be better served by the Skoda Karoq or the latest Volkswagen Tiguan.

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Boot space and storage 

Boot space in the Vauxhall Grandland is a bit more generous than passenger space. The 514 litres of capacity found in petrol and diesel models – the plug-in hybrid’s battery cuts it to 390 litres – is at the upper end of the mid-size SUV scale. For comparison, the Renault Austral has 430 litres, the Nissan Qashqai has 504 litres, the Kia Sportage has 591 litres.

There’s a large space underneath the removeable boot floor that’s a useful place for shopping bags, dog leads, dirty shoes and so on. Removing the floor creates about six inches of extra depth, albeit with a matching drop down from the back bumper. The back seat folds down in a 60:40 split to create 1,652 litres in the petrol/diesel models, 1,528 litres in the plug-in. Again, that’s at the upper end of the scale for a car of this type.

Storage spaces include large bins on all four doors, a cubby under the front centre armrest, another in front of the gear selector where you’ll find the wireless charger if fitted, and pockets on the back of the front seats. The glovebox is tiny, as is always the case with cars engineered in France as the Grandland largely was.

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Is it easy to park?

The Vauxhall Grandland isn’t a particularly large SUV. It’s a bit smaller than a Hyundai Tucson SUV, slightly longer than the Ford Focus hatchback, so it’ll slot easily into the vast majority of parking spaces. We found the view out of the windscreen to be perfectly good – the pillars don’t get in the way – but the views out of the back window and over the shoulder are rather restricted. Though we can say that about an awful lot of cars currently on sale.

The Ultimate trim level comes well stocked with parking aids including front and rear parking sensors, a surround-view camera system, a reversing camera – also standard on lesser trim levels no longer available – and a semi-automatic parking function. The latter steers the car into a parking space while the driver operates the throttle and brakes. Sounds impressive, but it takes so long to set up a manoeuvre that we found it’s quicker to just do it yourself.

View the car’s dimensions on our Vauxhall Grandland specs page.

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Safety

• Five star Euro NCAP rating
• Isofix seat mounts front and rear
• Lots of safety kit fitted as standard

Car safety body Euro NCAP awarded a full five star rating to the Vauxhall Grandland X and that rating can be applied to the current Grandland. However, the assessment was carried out in 2017 and Euro NCAP’s criteria have changed significantly in the meantime, so the Grandland’s results can’t be directly compared with those of rivals tested more recently, such as the Mazda CX-30.

Regardless, the Grandland is a fundamentally safe car that holds up well in an accident. The Ultimate trim level comes loaded with driver assistance features, as well, which Vauxhall markets as the PureSense package. Among the features are:

• Autonomous emergency braking
• Lane departure warning
• Lane keeping assist
• Speed sign recognition
• Driver attention monitor
• Blind spot alert

We found the lane departure warning, lane keeping assist and speed limit recognition are comparatively subtle in their interventions, but they can easily be turned off via the touchscreen if desired. Ultimate spec also comes with adaptive LED headlights that manipulate the light beam to provide a good view ahead without dazzling oncoming drivers.

Lesser trim levels aren’t as well equipped with safety features, but they all have automatic emergency braking at minimum. All models also have three sets of Isofix child seat mounts, on the outer rear seats and front passenger seat – the latter is best suited for booster-type seats, rather than bulky baby seats.

Watch: Vauxhall Grandland Euro NCAP crash test