Vauxhall Corsa - Practicality, comfort and boot space

This latest Vauxhall comes exclusively in a single five-door body style, much like the rest of its supermini rivals. The supportive seats up front have plenty of adjustment, while all-round visibility is pretty decent.

Storage is acceptable rather than spectacular for the class. The front door bins can each hold a big-ish bottle, while a pair of cupholders is in the centre console ahead of a small closed storage bin. 

The smartphone tray ahead of the gear selector is a nice touch to position your phone out of sight, and most devices will fit (apart from the largest ones). The glovebox is small, though, and isn’t even big enough for the slim guidebook. Rivals like the Hyundai i20, Skoda Fabia, and Volkswagen Polo have much bigger glove boxes.

Size

The latest Corsa measures 4,060mm long. That’s 39mm longer than its predecessor and 7mm longer than a Volkswagen Polo. At 1,765mm wide (not including mirrors) and 1,435mm tall, it’s grown 19mm wider and dropped 44mm lower than before. The wheelbase measures 2,538mm – 13mm less than the Polo.

Leg room, head room & passenger space

Even before you get in, things become a little tricky. The doors’ openings are pretty narrow – particularly at the back – which means it’s more challenging to get in than some rivals and more difficult to install a child seat.

Things aren't much better once you’ve squeezed through the back doors. Compared to rivals like the SEAT Ibiza, and Hyundai i20, the Corsa feels cramped. The low roof means anyone nudging six feet tall will brush their head against the ceiling, while knee room isn’t great either. The seats are comfy, though, and the requisite ISOFIX child seat mounting points are provided on the outer positions. They have fiddly zipped covers that are hard to remove, though.

Boot

The Corsa’s boot measures 309 litres. That’s 24 litres more than the old car, but it comes up short against the Hyundai i20 (326 litres), SEAT Ibiza (355 litres) and particularly the Renault Clio (391 litres) are all much more generous. Unlike the Vauxhall Corsa Electric, which has a reduced boot volume of 267 litres, the hybrid model maintains the same luggage capacity because the tiny battery pack lives under the front passenger seat, like most mild hybrids such as the Suzuki Swift.

The opening is relatively small, too, with quite a high-loading lip to lift heavy items over. The rear seatbacks fold in a 60:40 split, but beyond that, the space is short on the clever features you’ll find in a Honda Jazz, with a rear bench that folds flat into the floor, a low loading lip, or flip-up rear bench squab that Honda calls ‘Magic seats’ that could allow you to store a bike (admittedly with no front wheel attached) across the width of the car.