Car Review - Vauxhall Corsa SXi

This shiny vehicle that I have lived with for the past few days is a Vauxhall Corsa SXi in sovereign silver.

Sovereign Silver!? – well that’s wrong for a start, sovereigns aren’t silver are they? - they’re gold.

Anyway, when I saw “SXi” on the key fob, I was looking forward to a reasonably sporty experience. Maybe not a VXR or even an SRi but an “X” must mean something good mustn’t it?

Then I also spotted “1.2” on there. The figures in the back of Top Gear Magazine suggest 85bhp and also 85 torques with a top speed of 107mph and a 0-60 time of 12.7 seconds. Oh well – I’ve got a shopping car.

So I took it shopping.I’m not too sure about the side profile and what’s with those little windows in front of the door-mirrors? Who is ever going to look out of them?This is my favourite view, though - it shows the new corporate Vauxhall face and I think it has an attractively aggressive stance.

The boot, although it looks small, (but then again – I usually drive a Jag estate) coped adequately with a week’s worth of Tesco products. But to illustrate it better, and in the true spirit of car reviews, I have photographed it with just one item in it – an item that everyone immediately knows the size of – a box of 6 Askey’s Brandy Snap Baskets:The interior is very grey with shiny piano-black trim and red stitching which I guess is what makes it sporty enough to be called an SXi.No fancy infotainment unit but what there is plays Radio 2 just fine so no complaints in that department.

The steering wheel is fully adjustable but the position that is most comfortable for me means that I can’t see the top of the dials so I have to guess how fast I’m going and how much fuel I have unless I duck my head down to see under the rim. This gets quite irritating at speed cameras although may mean that if I get caught by a speed trap, they mightn’t be able to prove from the photo that it was me driving.Unlike all other car reviewers, I am not 6 foot 2. Consequently I have no size issues with the back of this car and I can also categorically state that there is plenty of room for a nine-year-old boy to be driven to school back there without complaining – well, complaining about the car anyway.

So what’s it like to drive?

It’s got the usual irritating Vauxhall quirks that I had forgotten about since I once drove a Vectra about 5 years ago. Apparently, if you want to learn how to fly a helicopter, you move the joystick and see what the helicopter does – so if you want it to do that again, move the joystick in the same way again. The same method works with training sheepdogs. It doesn’t work, however, with figuring out the indicator and wiper controls on Vauxhalls. Even reading the manual doesn’t help.

So, assuming you’ve got a road with no turns on a rain-free day, I’ll ask the question again, what’s it like to drive?

I know that the sweep of the bonnet is important for aero-dynamics and not killing pedestrians but it means that you can’t actually see from the driver’s seat where the car begins – that’s just daft in a small car.

It copes well with my motorway and A-Road commute, albeit a bit engine-noisy on the motorway when cruising at 70 to 75 at a bit over 3000revs. Maybe a sixth gear would fix that but it would also give the car an extra excuse to nag you to change up with a green “SHIFT UP” symbol that appears in the rev-counter when it decides that you need to. If it was moved to near the top of the rev-counter, then I wouldn’t be able to see it – so a suggestion for Vauxhall there.

A smaller engine than I’m used to means that you have to downshift (or “drop it down a cog” to use car-reviewer speak) to get past lorries and old people that I’m more accustomed to sailing past. To make up for this, I’m getting better fuel economy. Top Gear suggest 53.3mpg is achievable but my town and country mix of driving is currently giving about 40 – a figure I could only dream about in my own car.

The fact that this car only has 300 miles on the clock means that the engine still needs a bit of time to loosen up or bed in or whatever it is that new engines have to do - so I can’t be too critical.

So, what is my final verdict?

A competent small car. Comfortable and copes well, if noisily, at motorway speeds. Not enough room in the boot for a set of golf clubs – but then again, I don’t play golf. Talking of golf, does this car score a birdie or a bogey?

Well, overall, I think I’d have to say that it’s par for the Corsa.