Vauxhall Corsa Elite Nav Premium review: why I’m glad I got stuck with this instead of a Lamborghini

Vauxhall is automotive wallpaper paste. But being stuck in lockdown with one has changed my view.

Vauxhall Corsa Elite Nav Premium.

When England went into lockdown, the car I had on test was not a Lamborghini or a Bentley or an F-type Jag. Nope, the car I’ll be living with for the next 300 years, the car that will not be picked up until after the pandemic is over, is a bloody Vauxhall Corsa.

I don’t know why this fills me with such Eeyorish gloom. Maybe it’s because cars must have a sense of place. You need to know where they were made, because then you understand why they’re the way they are. A Ferrari is obviously Italian. A Honda is obviously Japanese. A Vauxhall is obviously... nothing at all. It’s automotive wallpaper paste.

For as long as I can remember, Vauxhall was part of General Motors, which meant it was American, but the only thing I can think of that’s less American than a diesel Astra is Stalin’s moustache. Maybe this is because Vauxhall is a sister company to Opel, which makes it German. Except that these days it’s part of the Peugeot group, so it’s French. Apart from the fact that the Corsa I’ve ended up with was made in Spain. It is, then, like one of those ghastly Eurotrash people you see in Hello! magazine.

James May, Richard Hammond and I have always agreed that the single funniest thing in motoring is the concept of a “fast Vauxhall”. It displays such a monumental lack of ambition. I once asked an idiot – he had on a tracksuit and a baseball cap – what car he would buy if he had an unlimited budget. “A Calibra turbo,” he replied. It was the single most shoulder-sagging answer in the entire history of vox pops.

That’s why I was miserable about my new life in the Corsa. And doubly miserable to discover it had one of those three-cylinder turbo engines. Sweet Jesus. It was trying to be a fast Vauxhall without even having any under-the-trousers cred.

That said, it was quite pretty. And practical, too. I tried to borrow some children to see how many would fit in the back, but that kind of thing is apparently frowned on these days. I then went for a drive and you know what? Despite myself, I liked it.

The peppy, eager engine really does have a sense of place – and that is very definitely France. There’s an off-beat strum and, despite being only a 1.2, it doesn’t half crack along.

My only real complaint was the braking; I only had to look at the pedal and the damn car stood on its nose as if it was in a cartoon. But, all things considered, it’s not a bad car at all. If it were called something else – the Murderer, for example, or the Faeces – then I’d recommend it wholeheartedly. And I know someone else who would as well.

I’m sharing my cottage in these trying times with an 18-year-old girl. Wait. Let’s be clear. I’m sharing my cottage with her mother, and she’s here because of that. As you can imagine, the girl is not happy about the quarantine. She’s supposed to be planning a trip to Magaluf and a million summer parties. Instead of which she’s stuck here on the farm.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, because I have a long driveway and I have that Vauxhall and it has a manual gearbox. So what the teenager does is invent reasons for going to the bottom of the drive and then, when she’s there, invents things she’s forgotten back at the house. It’s all she does. Whizz up and down the drive. She will be the first person in human history to say that her only true happiness for a long time was a brown 1.2-litre Vauxhall Corsa.

And the fact it makes her happy makes me happy, too. So I’m glad I didn’t get a Bentley or Lamborghini, because she’s too young to drive something like that. And here’s the funny thing. The herbert from the Welsh Pig Breeders’ Gazette who did get the Bentley and the motoring writer from Cosmopolitan who got the Lambo can’t drive them either. Because “road-testing a car” is not a good enough excuse to leave your house. They are, then, marooned by their own good fortune.

Vauxhall Corsa Elite Nav Premium

Transmission: Six-speed manual, front wheel drive

Engine: Three-cylinder 1.2 litre turbo (74kW / 205Nm)

Average fuel: 5.6 litres per 100km

Price: £21,000 (not available in Australia)

Rating: ★★★