The exciting new Vauxhall Insignia has exciting headlights

There you were last night, lying awake, fretting ‘why, oh why, does my otherwise excellent Vauxhall Insignia only have 16 LED bulbs in each of its headlight clusters?’ This stuff keeps us awake too. Rest easy, friend. This is the new, refreshed, revitalised Vauxhall Insignia, and it’s been eating all the carrots in the pursuit of greater night-vision. Welcome to a world of 84 LED elements per headlight.

Vauxhall is obviously pretty pleased with how the latest Insignia turned out first time around, because changes for this refreshed version, to battle the facelifted VW Passat and new Skoda Octavia, are vanishingly small. The headlights are indeed slimmer, brighter, and can perform the clever ‘Matrix’ dance we first saw on cars like the Audi A8, to keep main beam on at all times, save for a pocket of dimmer light to avoid dazzling other motorists. It’s all terribly clever stuff. You can find the same tech on the new Corsa too. What’s on yesterday's limo-barges lives in tomorrow’s superminis…

At the back, there’s now the option of a safety system that uses radars to look 90 degrees out of the car’s bum and warn the driver if they’re reversing into the path of an oncoming car, errant pedestrian, or runaway ice-cream van. The grilles and bumpers have been tweaked, and inside, there’s a new touchscreen that will make friends with Apple and Android smartphones.

And that’s your lot. Sadly, Vauxhall killed off the handsome Insignia Sports Tourer and Country Tourer wagons, because about minus three people bought them, and went for a mulchy blend of beige crossovers instead. Fools. Is there a gag in there somewhere about seeing the light? No, Oh. Okay then.