Vauxhall Corsa 1.0 SRi

I was taking my youngest son down to Sussex for the weekend and as a treat, flew down to Heathrow from Leeds instead of making the 5 hour journey with a four year old by train. I therefore needed a car to get around and chose to use Avis at Terminal 5 as they are one of only two car hire companies actually located at the terminal itself.

It’s not far from arrivals to the fourth floor of the short stay car park and my Avis Preferred card meant the keys were handed to me straight-away and in no time I was ready to drive away.

First impressions

My first impression of this particular Vauxhall Corsa SRi was that it’s very, er, green. Not in a great fuel economy, kind to the environment sort of way, but in terms of the colour. Green. Very green. Wouldn’t miss it in a car park green.

Colour aside, we were quickly out of the car park and onto the M25 which, for a Friday afternoon, was surprisingly quiet.

The drive

First impressions of the Corsa were really positive. I’d purposely booked a small car as I didn’t need anything bigger and so wasn’t expecting much from it but the small 1.0 litre, three cylinder, turbo-charged engine seemed perfectly fine on the motorway. I know this particular stretch of the London orbital well as I used to drive it daily in a 1.6 litre VTEC Honda Civic. I was expecting the small Corsa to feel a little sluggish but despite the 89 BHP engine, it actually felt perfectly comfortable out in lane five at speed.

The car seemed reasonably well equipped with manual air conditioning, cruise control and Bluetooth mobile phone connection with everything controlled as you’d expect from the steering wheel controls.

Having driven the car a couple of hundred miles, I felt the Corsa was comfortable and a perfectly adequate weekend car for the two of us.

Conclusions

The current Corsa SRi seems a world away from those I remember seeing 10 years ago. Although they share the same badge, I can’t imagine this car with blacked out windows, a four-inch ‘Big Bore’ exhaust and 1000w sound system.

For a small town runaround, it’s comfortable, efficient on fuel and when let out onto the motorway, has enough speed and acceleration to not feel like you need to just sit in lane one.

I just can’t imagine why anyone would choose this colour though!