Why we ran it: To get to know Vauxhall’s new supermini better, first in petrol and then in electric form
Month 6 - Month 5 - Month 4 - Month 3 - Month 2 - Month 1 - Prices and specs
Life with a Corsa-E: Month 6
After a petrol Corsa, did the electric version feel like the future? We reveal all - 13 January 2020
What exactly is a ‘people’s car’? It’s a label we apply readily to stalwarts of affordable mobility like the original Volkswagen Beetle, Austin Mini and Fiat 500, and so we could take the term to describe a facilitator of mass motorisation or – more grandly – a transformative automobile that rewrites the entire rulebook for its segment.
Perhaps naively, that’s what I thought the Corsa-e might prove itself to be and was fully prepared to end our string of reports with the somewhat gushing conclusion that this electric supermini had arrived to make zero-emission travel accessible for all with minimal compromise. If only things were so simple.
I’m of a certain age that the Corsa nameplate brings back memories of handbrake turns in the school car park and Friday evenings spent at McDonald’s – hardly images associated with chic and forward-thinking urban mobility. However, the PSA Group’s take on the Luton supermini is a world away from the previous General Motors-developed car, with the vivid two-tone livery of our long-term test car enlivening Vauxhall’s already attractive new-age design language to great effect. The interior, too, is a cut above in terms of ergonomics and visual verve, but still feels hamstrung by a faint drabness that plagues current Vauxhalls.
It’s difficult not to take issue with the Corsa’s uninspiring ambience – shared by electric and combustion cars – when other PSA efforts, most poignantly the Corsa’s Peugeot 208 sibling, seem much more visibly upmarket. I salute its functionality and ease of use, though, with a refreshingly comprehensive array of physical controls giving immediate access to functions you might find buried in the depths of other cars’ infotainment systems.
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Uncomfortable, squashed in car with poor and lacking driver info, no frilly mod ons that make you go "ooooooo" and a battery that gas lights you about it's range.
If you want a car to drive to tesco to do shopping for one once a week then part with your money for an overpriced sham of an EV.
month 5 report. Why would you start a motorway journey first thing in the morning, in winter no less, knowing there was less than 100 miles in the battery.
My wife had an Ampera hybrid which was fun to drive mainly in electric mode (if you've not driven an electric or hybrid car the silence is incredibly relaxing) but, if we went further afield we had the engine back up, of course.
This car sounds like a constant worry for anything other than local journies. It's like going back to my first car; will we get there?