The Vauxhall Corsa is a common, everyday car. The Corsa VXR however is a taut, powerful, fast car that goes like a bat out of hell and stops hard thanks to massive brakes, sits low to the ground with sporty suspension, etc. It’s one of the fastest hatchbacks money can buy. So trying to make it even faster and even more powerful would be crazy. Far too outlandish a task. But if you did try and tune one up, what sort of demonic creature would you end up with?

Welcome to the Corsa VXR-R, courtesy of Thorney Motorsport. Yes, this is another case of a tuning/motorsport company working late each night playing around with their toys, but unlike a lot of the results, anybody can buy this one. You could even get one from a Vauxhall dealership if you ask the right people the right questions.

The exterior is as you’d expect - black paint job, some special-edition stripes, some aesthetic changes such as exhausts that would look good on a Lamborghini, bigger alloy wheels, pointier wingmirrors, etc. Not sure I like it though. The green-rimmed alloys are a bit much, but then the VXR was built to be outlandish and antisocial, so it’s only natural that the VXR-R would be even more so.

The most important thing with this car is the power. It may only have a 1.6L four-cylinder engine like normal Corsas, but it puts out a whopping 230bhp. In a car the size of a kleenex tissue box, that’s good for a 0-60mph time of 5.4 seconds and a top speed of 160mph. So if you drive a Porsche Boxster for its performance, you are going to look stupid when a boy racer comes flying past you in his Corsa, and you can’t keep up.

But don’t worry, you won’t be the only one. The BMW M3 has over 400bhp and yet is slower than this. Even the 572bhp Audi RS6 is slower than this. All because they’re bigger and much, much heavier.

Not bad for a boy racer’s hatchback. But then again this isn’t just some Halfords job on a cheap supermini. Thorney Motorsport have built this car from ground up, using indoor and outdoor circuit races as a constant proving grounds. They add parts to the car, they race it. If it wins, great, keep said bits. If not, go back, change some parts and come back. If ever there was a road car truly bred by motorsport, this is it. So naturally it will destroy most cars designed purely for the road, especially when driven by someone who knows what they’re doing.

The interior is actually quite tame given the nature of this car. You get sport seats as you’d expect, but the rest of the interior is very ‘Vauxhall’, if you know what I mean. It’s all nice enough, but not what you’d expect for a tuned-up racer designed to be driven hard. You even get lots of legroom in the back - something quite rare for fast cars.

Want one? You’ll need £22,495. But that said, this is a limited edition car by a motorsport team. You won’t be worrying about the options list because, well, there isn’t one. Given that the car I want costs £20k without any of the stuff I want in it (including leather interior) and about £24k with, I may well change my mind after this!

I went to the VW dealership to finally see the new Scirocco GT in the metal, and to book a test drive to find out what’s what. The petrolhead world is already buzzing with news of how it’s better than the Golf GTi, and that it’s the best looking VW ever made in the last 10 or 20 years, and so on. All the hype had me drawing up various assumptions about what the car would be like. But bloody hell it was far from what I expected. Unfortunately my surprise was cut short of actually driving it - that will come in another article later on. But what I did get to experience really surprised me, which is why I feel compelled to write about it now, and not in a week’s time.

When you look at the car in magazines and such, you can be forgiven for thinking of it as a cheap(ish) 3-door hatchback. It has a large hatch-style boot and room in the back for kids. The rear legroom isn’t great, but then neither is the rear legroom in my 206, and if anything the rear legroom in the Scirocco is more than what my small 206 offers. So it ticks the basic hatchback boxes, but beyond that it’s an entirely different animal. For one, it’s huge. It sits much lower to the ground than it’s main rival the VW Golf, and it’s considerably wider too. Those differences make it much better to drive - it’s sharper and more agile than the Golf and much easier to drive too, or so everyone keeps saying. But it’s no Pocket Rocket - it’s not a Renault Clio or a Peugeot, or even a Golf. It looks and feels much more special than any of those, whilst still reassuringly fast. 200bhp, 0-60mph in 7 seconds and a top speed of 155mph? Yes please! And yes, those figures are for the range-topping 2.0L petrol engines ones, but the 2.0L diesel and 1.4L petrol variants aren’t much slower either. The 1.4L model may have a smaller engine, but it has less kit with it too. Less weight = more speed, making it competitive enough to just about keep up with the 2.0L model. Sort of.

Also VW is passing it off as a small Coupe, but it really isn’t. Anyone in the market for a GT coupe would look at sports cars like the Mazda RX8 or the Nissan 350Z, and aren’t realistically going to consider something that looks like a hatchback. Meanwhile, hatchback customers will look at the Scirocco as a desirable option. Yes, it feels like a GT car inside, but its rivals are hatchbacks like the Golf GTi, not small GT coupes like the Alfa Romeo Brera. That says a lot for the car’s target audience too. So it’s a large, luxurious hatchback in my opinion.

Interior

Again the interior really surprised me. I was expecting an interior similar to that of the Mk V Golf, when in fact it’s a far cry. You get a taste of its ’sports car’ blood immediately when you notice that the headroom is lower than you’d expect and that visibility is a good 40-50% less than what you’d get in a Golf. However, this sacrifice is rewarded with beautiful high quality leather seats (even in the back seats. no driver-only shortcomings here!). They’re so good that I thought back to the Porsche 911 Turbo I drove at Donnington Circuit a while ago and to be honest, you can’t choose between them on comfort. That’s high praise. You also get a godlike driving position, GT-style doors and mirrors with a weighty and expensive feel to them, and luxuries such as a telephone system, DVD Satnav, cruise control, rear parking sensors, headlight washers, dusk-sensors and auto-headlights, rain sensors and auto-wipers for the windscreen, climate control, and a brand new system making its debut on the new Scirocco - ACC, or Adaptive Chassis Control. More on that later. But my favourite is actually a rather simple but clever feature - an electronic rear-view mirror that dims when there’s a lot of light. This is designed to help against tailgating bastards who drive an inch from your rear end with full beam headlights. Finally, something to fight off the bane of British roads!

It all feels like quite a special car, something that goes far beyond what you’d get from a large hatchback. The seats are comparable to that of Porsche’s offerings, which sounds absurd given that a Porsche is an exotic car. But I think that’s what the Scirocco is too - it feels like an exotic GT car for the common man with a common wage packet. That’s something Alfa Romeo has been trying to do for years, and their best effort thus far has been the Alfa Romeo Brera, a GT/hatchback much like the Scirocco. Only problem is, a top range one is between £25k-£30k before you even poke at the options list. You could get a fully-specced, top of the range Scirocco for the same price (and trust me, you won’t want all of the toys VW offers). So much for ‘common man’.

Exterior

It’s a case of swings and roundabouts. The Scirocco is by far the best looking VW in the past decade or two, and possibly the best looker amongst its competitors. It’s just a shame that VW are ripping people off with the paint jobs. The standard colours are Candy White and Salsa Red, both gloss colours. That’s it. The metallic colours are all very nice - Viper Green and Rising Blue being the best of the bunch in my opinion (don’t bother with black, it doesn’t seem to suit the car as well as the other colours). But they charge extra for those, and the standard colours put you in a tight spot. You can’t buy Salsa Red because it makes the Scirocco look like a bit of a girl’s car (which is great… if you’re a girl), and whilst Candy White looks brilliant in the showroom, you just know that within a week it’ll look dirty. However, I’m sure that if you offer to take a VW salesman out for dinner he’ll give you a showroom deal and you might be able to get a metallic colour for free. But don’t hold your breath, and don’t tell them I told you.

Aside from the colours you can also get a panoramic sunroof if you so choose. It’s just over £600 and to be honest I’ve heard scary stuff about it, like how it makes the cabin echo. I’d really recommend test-driving one with the sunroof before buying. Speaking of driving…

Performance

Since i’ve yet to drive it I can’t give you fancy poetic words, but I can tell you that it should be a laugh to drive. Ventilated disk brakes front and rear, a torquey 2.0L engine, and the option for Volkswagon’s famously brilliant DSG paddle-shift semi-automatic gearbox. Speed freaks will tell you to go for the DSG ‘box because gear changes are made “faster than a blink of the eye” (VW’s own words) and that’s not all hot air as it means the car is faster to 60mph than the standard manual. By 0.1 of a second. But you do pay £1000 or so more for it. The diesel variant has less power (140bhp as opposed to 200bhp) but will be smoother than the petrol variant. Fuel economy isn’t much better than the petrol though which is surprising, so I expect most people will be opting for the petrol version.

The talk of the town though is VW’s new ‘ACC’ system, or Adaptive Chassis Control, that’s debuting on the new Scirocco. As the name might suggest, it adjusts the suspension, throttle response and steering in accordance for what you want. You have a choice of three modes - ‘Normal’ is self explanatory and is the Scirocco’s default settings. ‘Comfort’ is probably going to be used for motorway driving as it softens the suspension and generally makes the car easier to drive in that environment. Then there’s the good ol’ ‘Sport’ mode which quickens the throttle response, makes the car more rev-happy, stiffens the suspension, and generally prepares the car for a good thrashing around on winding backroads. The hint of it’s capability is made in the form of a button sitting alongside the ACC controls that reads ‘ESP Off’. Hitting that turns the traction control off, giving you full control of the car so that you can plunge into that hedge if you really want to. Not many hatchbacks come with traction control. But whether all this effort in performance has worked is a question that will have to be answered later.

Should I buy one?

Well that remains to be seen and to be honest I’m asking myself the same question. I’d like this as my next car but it’s not cheap compared to what’s on offer. The basic Scirocco with a 1.4L engine starts at about £18k and climbs from there. But for a mere £2k extra you can get the Scirocco GT. It’s the best value for money out of the two because it comes with more luxuries as standard. For example, those fancy leather seats are extra on the basic model and even then only on the front seats, whilst the GT sports the fancy interior throughout the car.

It’s sort of in a class of it’s own. It’s noticeably better than the best hatchbacks on offer such as the Golf GTi, but as a full grown GT car it falls a bit short to hold its own in that category. It really is a mix of both classes. Buying one would be a question of ‘How badly do you want one?’

I want to take it for 24 hours to see what it’s like to live with in all conditions - wet, dry, day, night, motorways, towns, welsh backroads and so on. Some places do allow 24 hour test drives (Peugeot for example are forever advertising it) but I’d be lucky if I got such luck given that it’s so new. If it passes in all areas then i’d say go for it - very few cars tick as many boxes as the Scirocco, and it’s definitely a car you’d want to keep for a long, long, long time since it’s very practical and feels so special at the same time. It’s a car that will help with the weekly shopping or the school run, and at the same time allow blokes to revel in the joys of driving when the wife isn’t looking.

Overall rating? That will have to wait until after I’ve driven it.