What do you do if you're Vauxhall?

The things we worried about a few years ago it being in the squeezed middle, neither a premium brand nor a value brand, which are the main places profitable car makers tend to be are coming to pass. Vauxhall has the second-most dealers in this country, is still the third-most-trusted brand in some surveys and yet is currently being outsold here by Peugeot.

Worse still, that already perilous position of not having an obvious identity, of not being able to give a clear reason to buy one of its cars (buy a BMW because you're posh; buy a Skoda because you're sensible), has since been worsened by Chinese car makers arriving with prices that Vauxhall just can't match (it's not alone).

And if you don't give a monkey's about what badge your car wears or where it comes from, why would you look beyond those Chinese cars? Even if they are using the Uber business model: arrive and undercut until they dominate the establishment out of business.

Vauxhall is surely one of the makers that BYD, Chery, Geely, MG etc would most like to see off and think they're most likely to.

So why choose a Vauxhall today? What even is a Vauxhall, this famous old British brand? Put it this way, if you will forgive me talking shop: on international press events, British journalists tend to arrive first or last, because the organisers have to change the Opel badges before we get there. Vauxhalls' dynamics aren't even signed off in the UK any more, as they were until quite recently.

Into this, then, enter a new performance sub-brand, or a revival of an old one: GSE.

Are long-lost fun cars like the Saxo VTS about to return?