What is it?
The first time we’ve driven the new, speedily-developed Vauxhall Corsa on British roads. And if there’s anywhere it’s worth testing the Corsa, it’s here, the supermini’s largest market even compared to parent brand Opel’s home, Germany.
Vauxhall is keen to make mention of how important the Corsa is: not just to Vauxhall itself as by far and away its most popular model, but to the UK. Generally second only to the Fiesta in the supermini sales charts, it's a model that transcends age groups and classes. Almost everyone will have been in or driven a Corsa throughout their life.
Anyway, you’d have been living in a cave (or perhaps not reading Autocar often enough) if you weren’t aware of the latest Corsa’s relationship with the new Peugeot 208. Opel was close to finishing a new Corsa under GM ownership, but when the PSA Group took the reigns in 2017 the project was started afresh with PSA’s modular CMP platform, for reasons explained eloquently by my colleague from the Corsa’s European launch.
So, a mere two years from that point, we find ourselves on the roads around the sprawling Goodwood estate in a Vauxhall supermini that is unrecognisable from its predecessor. And that’s a good thing, we reckon: the old car had almost MPV-like proportions, whereas the new model has a full 48mm lopped off the roofline and 39mm added to the length. It’s actually a touch narrower, but it certainly doesn’t look it thanks to its squat, purposeful stance.
The new Corsa’s range is, thankfully, greatly simplified over the old car. Instead of a baffling array of trims and engine there’s two petrol engines, one diesel and a new, all electric version (more on that early next year). These can be mated to six trim levels (each with a ‘Nav’ spec), with options grouped into packs.
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Opel vs Vauxhall
I remember the days of good healthy competition between Opel and Vauxhall in the UK in the 80’s. Nothing like competition to help drive up design, engineering and manufacturing quality. When Opel was pulled from the UK, My Dad always used to drive to the Irish Republic to pick up his new Opel, he preferred the build quality and design of those cars over the British designed and built Vauxhall’s.
They were so similar anyway, why didn’t they just produce one design for each class of car?
Just a quick point of information...
The new MY20 Vauxhall Corsa starts from £15,550 here in the UK and not from £10,810 as indicated in the heading to the above article - see Autocar's own article on the model's launch at last September's Frankfurt Motor Show.
Incidentally, I note that the same error has been made in the heading to Richard Lane's review of the MY20 Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 Elite Nav version which was published on the 19th November.
Hi Clive,
Hi Clive,
I'm afraid that figure is taken from an independent database that hasn't updated its system - we have no power over that particular section of the page display right now. But will see if there's a workaround.
Lawrence
Everyone expects a big
Everyone expects a big discount on a Vauxhall so they are just starting high I guess to try and keep some margin. Trouble with this is starts out priced like a premium but it kills residuals so the owner loses out big time in the end.
Ford got caught in this loop and its very damaging long term, it pushes you out of the fleet market as no one wants to pay tax on a £25K car that actually only cost £17K in fleet bulk. It also perpetuates the image that your products are cheap and nasty if you can discount so severely, people don't like to feel ripped off and a high list price that can be cut so hard suggests an attempt to flog something for a lot more thats it worth.