Published:
7 May 2015If Corsa VXR buyers really are the diehard crowd that Vauxhall portrays them to be, the acceleration times that we extracted for the latest version, after multiple attempts in near-perfect conditions at MIRA, will be something of a disappointment.
Two up, the Corsa VXR failed to crack 7.0sec to 60mph and also failed by a slender margin to outpace the Ford Fiesta ST2 we tested. At 7.2sec, it was also more than half a second slower than the Peugeot 208 GTi 30th we benchmarked a couple of months ago.
Although the value of such figures is widely overstated, their importance to the hot hatch buyer is not – and for some, mediocrity may devalue the VXR’s appeal.
The reason for its tardiness is clearly not lack of power but rather its application; the car suffers from a predictable lack of traction off the line.
It is also not helped by Vauxhall’s preference for short gearing, which prevents you from achieving 60mph in second gear. The upshift to third gear is the main reason for the no more powerful 208’s surprising advantage.
That the Peugeot retains the same superiority from 30mph to 70mph – a better real-world measure of acceleration – is more damning and suggests that the Vauxhall isn’t quite as propulsive as it might be expected to be.
