Another SOTW debutant this week in the terrier-like, up-and-at-‘em shape of this 2011 Corsa VXR. Shed faithfully promises that there will be no stereotyping in this story.
As you may know, Shed is quite careful with his money. He will never get solar panels put on his roof because Bob the Binman once told him, with the kind of confidence that comes from sitting in the passenger seat of a bin lorry all day reading books while the young ‘uns do all the work, that the sun was 80 per cent of the way through its lifespan. If Shed could have been bothered to look it up for himself he would have found that there were still three billion or so years of sunshine left, but even if he had discovered that he probably would have stuck to his guns, just on principle.
As a result of his stinginess he has always liked cheap little cars as long as they have a bit of spunk about them. One of his favourites, until he parked it vertically against a wall, was his 1988 Nova GTE. 100hp from a 1.6 engine in something weighing under 850kg sounded like fun, and so it was. Today’s GTE values confirm that it still is fun.
Sadly, all fun was unceremoniously whipped off the table in 1993 when the balsa Nova GTE had to make way for the remarkably fun-free Corsa. The best part of a decade dragged by in a miasma of turpitude before Vauxhall caved in to the beseechings of its performance-hungry fans and launched the first Corsa VXR. That’s what you’re looking at now.
Based on the fourth-generation (‘D’) Corsa, the VXR had the same-sized 1.6 engine as the Nova GTE, but nearly double the power thanks to its turbocharger. Of course it weighed a lot more too at 1,255kg but with 189hp and 192lb ft from 1,980-5,800rpm the Corsa VXR still did the 0-60 in 6.8 seconds and ran on to 140mph. As per Shed with the postmistress, you only got max thrunge in five-second bursts, and only in the top four gears too, though that’s not relevant here as Shed is very much a single-speed operator, the human equivalent of a Victorian hit-and-miss engine.
In all honesty, the steering, traction and gearbox on the first Corsa VXR weren’t great. Vauxhall did a lot of mods on the 2015-on ‘E’ gen-two, including improving the gear linkage, and they all went up to the same 202hp and 207lb ft as the last slippy-diffed Nürburgring and Clubsport special editions of the ‘D’ gen-one. Sadly it was all too little, too late. The whole VXR line was knocked on the head in 2018, a year after Vauxhall had been taken over by PSA.
Anyroad up, back to our one, which Shed believes to be a VXR Blue. That means Arden Blue paint, a charcoal and black Recaro interior and 18-inch alloys in Tasty Geezer black. There are a few signs of wear at the front, possibly as a result of too much tailgating on motorway ‘fast’ lanes. Oddly our example does not have vape vents but these are cheaply available at a tacky outlet near you. The interior generally is not what you’d call minty fresh but it’s nothing an apprentice binman in a hazmat suit couldn’t sort out for a few notes. The MOT runs to February; if the mildly worn front brakes mentioned in last year’s test weren’t replaced then, they might need doing now. That’s not a big cost. Brembo discs are about 50 quid a corner.
In the course of what he laughably calls research Shed happened upon a YT vid of a VXR Blue auction in April of this year (2024 if you’re reading this in the future or, more unusually, the past). Despite some obvious rust on the rear three-quarter panel that 80,000-miler fetched £2,998. Our 114,000-mile example with no apparent rust is £1,995. Not a bad saving on the new price which at one point was uncomfortably, not to say unbelievably, close to £19,000. In fact, it was over £19k for the Blue as Vauxhall dealers wanted £700 extra for that. Still, you get nearly 36mpg on the combined cycle, whatever tandems have got to do with it, and Shed is guessing you’ll pay £305 for the tax.
The vendors are putting a new MOT on it and they’re even giving it a three-month warranty. Sadly this will not cover you for ramming it into a hedge, spinning it into a parked car or boshing the brakes on in front of somebody for the insurance money.
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