Vauxhall Corsa (2011) review
by David Finlay (19 March 2011)
Normally, when a car goes through a mid-life udpate, all the major changes happen at once, but that's not the case with the Vauxhall Corsa. It has certainly been altered for the 2011 model year, but mostly in the sense that it looks different - other upgrade work was carried out in 2010.
For 2011, the Corsa has been mildly restyled, with a new grille, front bumper, "eagle-eye" headlights and some chrome work around the foglights. There are also five new colours, namely Lime Green pearlescent, Chilli Orange metallic, Pepperdust metallic, Guacamole and, as pictured here, something called Sunny Melon which appears to have been inspired not by melons at all but by a banana smoothie.
The SE and SXi trim levels include a new design of 16" alloy wheel, while the high-performance 189bhp VXR gets 18s of a similar design to the 20" wheels available on the Insignia VXR.
There are colour changes inside too, plus a new (and optional) Touch & Connect multimedia system with a 5" touchscreen, satellite navigation with 2D and 3D maps, a CD player, an auxiliary input, a USB port and Bluetooth connectivity.
The changes that had already been made before the facelift include start/stop technology on some models (bringing the green figures of the 94bhp 1.3 CDTi diesel three-door to 80.7mpg combined and 94g/km of CO2 emissions, which in turn means that you don't have to pay for Vehicle Excise Duty or the London congestion charge).
And then there's the upgrading of the steering and suspension systems which - if you like reading about this sort of thing - include softer front springs, revised damping all-round, a thicker front anti-roll bar and a retuned ESP system. The result of all that is that the Corsa generally rides well, is easy to drive round town and can be quite entertaining on country roads.
There's some good stuff here, but having driven two versions of the "new" model (one with the 1.3 CDTi stop/start set-up, the other with the 1.2-litre petrol engine which Vauxhall believes will be the most popular choice) I'm left with the feeling that the Corsa doesn't need to be upgraded so much as replaced entirely.
For a start, it doesn't feel as if it's made of particularly durable materials, and it allows a great deal of road noise into the cabin. In both respects it falls way behind the Ford Fiesta and Volkswagen Polo, and ought it to be the way of things that a Vauxhall should have less of a premium feel than a SEAT (Ibiza) or a Skoda (Fabia)?
Elsewhere in the Vauxhall line-up, the Astra, Insignia and - I stoutly maintain, against considerable opposition from colleagues - the new Antara, to take the first three examples that occur to me, have rather a high-class air to them, thanks to their quiet operation and imaginatively-designed interiors. By comparison, the Corsa feels as if it has been designed on the cheap for use only in developing markets, and was never intended to go on sale in Europe at all.
I also object strongly to the visibility, which is bad even by the miserable standard of the class. The three-door in particular is a shocker (there's no excuse for those bizarrely-designed rear side windows) but the five-door version is nothing to brag about either. And the 2011 update did not include moving the light controls to somewhere the driver could reach them without leaning forward in his or her seat, which doesn't strike me as much of a safety feature.
And yet there are some nice touches. The availability, depending on model, of Hill Start Assist, adaptive forward lighting (in which extra lights come on to illuminate the road ahead as the car turns a corner) and most especially a heated steering wheel are all impressive for a small family car. Their appearance on the equipment list suggests that the Corsa is a very special member of its class, even though it doesn't actually feel like that.
The existence of a £9995 one-litre petrol three-door Corsa with its own basic trim level called Expression allows Vauxhall to say that the starting price for the range is in four figures (both Ford and Volkswagen can make a similar claim), but the second cheapest model costs £11,365, and the most expensive non-VXR model will set you back nearly £18,000, which is no small amount for a mainstream supermini.
Within those figures there's a great deal of choice. Apart from the three- and five-door body styles you can also pick from trim levels called S, Excite, Exclusiv, SE, SXi, Limited Edition (which has very aggressive styling but isn't actually limited at all) and SRi, plus 1.0, 1.2 and 1.4 petrol engines, 74bhp and 94bhp versions of the 1.3 diesel and a 128bhp 1.7 diesel which is the most powerful unit available, again excepting the VXR. The sub-100g/km models cost between £14,080 and and £15,580, depending on trim level and number of doors.
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