Spent some time over the weekend in the Vauxhall Corsa VXR Nurburgring Edition. With just over 200bhp pumping out of the 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol engine, it’s quite the hot hatch. It will hit 60mph from a standing start in 6.5 seconds and has a top speed of 143mph. The steering is wonderfully direct and to use the old motoring journalism cliché, it corners on rails. Sadly the downside to all this is that the ride is very firm. And I mean very firm. On the well-maintained tarmac of a circuit – such as the legendary one in Germany where much of the car’s bespoke suspension set-up was developed – I’m sure it’s fantastic. But on the ageing concrete of the A14 dual carriageway and rural A-roads of Suffolk it quickly got tiresome. I ventured on the B-roads and quickly decided that was just too much for my stomach to handle. At £22,295 it’s a lot of money for something where the enjoyment of driving is so compromised. One other thing; the car looks great from the outside, and the interior has been well dressed up with sporty styling features, but it’s hard to hide the dated design behind the cabin.
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