Oh my eyes! This Corsa is bright. Very bright. It’s also an attention-grabber - especially with its bright yellow paint, which saw it immediately dubbed the “custard slice”.
The Opel Corsa Colour edition comes in a range of hues, but the “sunny melon” is by far the most in-your-face.
With dark window tints in the rear, a gloss-finish black roof, and 17” rims, the outside looks lively and he bling feel is enhanced inside by yellow-stitched front sport seats, “sporty” alloy pedals, leather-clad steering wheel and brightly coloured doughnut-sized air-vents.
On paper, the 74kW, 16-valve, 1.4-litre engine, five-speed gearbox and sports chassis promise a lot.
The Corsa brand is well-established in South Africa and the pick-up version has become almost the stuff of legend - sporty, durable and very popular.
The current Corsa range looks good from the outside too, with sweeping, modern lines and attractive proportions.
All well and good, until you get into the driver’s seat and, after a few kilometres, the Corsa’s shortcomings become evident.
It is certainly nippy but the ride is very floaty, with very little steering feel. At highway speeds the engine is revving close to 4000rpm and starting to drone.
The old adage of spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar springs to mind - the plastics used inside are hard and unsightly, the steering cowl has a rubber surround that looks and feels tacky and, on the outside, the chassis is visible, exposing ugly welds and splotches of rust-proofing.
The car is an excellent example of how a cute exterior sometimes just doesn’t translate into a practical interior. Visibility is an issue - the very deep fascia creates a host of annoying reflections on the steeply-angled windscreen, while those yellow doughnut-vents lurk ghostlike in the side mirrors. This is especially bothersome at night with the sheen from streetlights causing a lot of distractions.
The tinted rear windows, as well as substantial C-pillars, make rear visibility a nightmare and reversing out of angled parking calls for some major contortions to check for approaching traffic. And, with no park distance control as well as a lack of reference points on the rear fenders, reversing the Corsa can be quite tricky.
The driver’s seat is pretty comfortable but, by the time you’ve adjusted it to your height, wrestled with the wheel adjustment, and found your ideal driving position, you have to go through more contortions to reach the seatbelt.
And then you have to undo it again, before going through more gymnastics while trying to reverse out of the parking bay…
And, while the front accommodation has a (too) bright and airy feel, the rear can best be described as claustrophobic.
The tinted windows may look “funky” (Opel’s word) but the lack of light turns the backseat area into a cave. My kids hated it. And then there is the small matter of getting them in. Wrestling with the handle to tilt and slide the seat forward, I managed to nip my hand quite painfully, and to move the passenger seat from the driver’s seat is nigh on impossible. The Corsa has Isofix fittings for child seats in the rear, but I would hate to be the mother who has to grapple with those seats while holding an infant.
Boot space is about what one would expect, and the rear seatback folds down to increase the load volume, but don’t expect to get a bicycle in there - I’m surprised, given the sporty lifestyle theme of this car, that Opel didn’t go for the clever integrated bike rack option.
Which makes me wonder: who is Opel’s target market? Youth maybe? But at a more than R180 000, it’s a tad expensive. Performance-wise, it has little appeal to the boy racer and it isn’t family friendly.
The Corsa seems to be a lot of show, but no substance.