As I posted last week, after a good 8 months and 18000km, time had come to say goodbye to the trusty Clio. Hopes were high for this round of the rental roulette. Would it be a Kia Rio, or a Ford Fiesta, or maybe a VW Polo?
Nope. It turned out to me by #1 most hated car in that class, the Opel Corsa. After tring to hide my disappointment as the Avis dude handed me the keys, I walked over to the car and took a good look at it. The model?s been around since 2006, so the shape is familiar, but the facelifts haven?t been kind to it. The bumpers look out of place, and the headlights look downright silly, like some cheap aftermarket units someone with a complete lack of taste would have tacked on. The pale green colour does suit the lines of the car, so all in all it?s not that bad a car to look at, although I prefer the older, non facelifted models to this one.
Opening the door and getting in was like going back in time 10 years after driving the Clio. No fancy design, high-tech look or large touchscreens. Just patterned black plastic, more buttons than a W140 S-class and a CD slot. The seats look nice, with high side bolsters, a funky quilted pattern and faux leather sides, but aren?t that comfortable for me to sit in. The lumbar support is too high, pushing my back forward, making me sit like Quasimodo. The aforementioned patterned black plastic dashboard is mostly covered with a rubber-like material that is not completely rock-hard, but isn?t exactly soft-touch either. The center console is adorned with the industry-standard fingerprint-magnet shiny black plastic which kind of looks nice. The other plastics in the interior, however, are harder than coco?s balls and look cheaper than a diseased Mexican hooker. Even the armrests in the door cards are barely padded, making my elbow hurt after more than 30 minutes of driving. At the top of the center stack is a dot matrix info screen that looks like it came straight from a 1999 Opel Vectra. When driving this screen prominently reads out the car?s (not very good) consumption figures, basic info about the entertainment you?re enjoying, outside temperature, and the climate control?s settings. Opel is still infatuated with self-cancelling stalks. I guess it's an acquired taste, but I really hate them. And t make matters worse, the Opel engineers seem to have found a new love, jog-wheels. Even the instrument cluster light adjustment is one, making turning the instrumen lights on or off a long and painsaking process, instead of just turning a wheel from one extreme to the other. The headlight switch is also an example of self-centering controls gone mad. The switch
appears to have four settings, but in truth has 3, auto, parking lights and on. The on/off symbol is to turn the auto-lights feature on or off, but after turning the feaure off, the switch returns to the Auto position, making it impossible to see if you hve auto lights on or off, until the conditions change enough for the headlights to turn on.
The auto wipers and auto headlights are by far the most dimwitted example I've ever come across. After entering a tunnel, it take at least 200m before the lights turn on, and the wiper will enthousiastically continue wiping for the entire length of a 400m tunnel. Even the system in the 2001 C-class was better.
The car is a Cosmo trim level, and it?s quite nicely specced. There?s heated seats and steering wheel, climate control, parking sensors, auto wipers and lights, auto dimming rear view mirror, half (faux) leather seats, 16? alloys, and more. The glaring omission, though, is a Bluetooth hands-free system.
After digging through my cable box to find an AUX cable to hook up my phone to the car, I set off. The 100hp 1.4l unit is faster than the Clio?s 90hp 0.9l engine, yet it doesn?t feel faster. The culprit is the throttle response, which is lethargic at best. The engine is capable of getting the car from a standstill to motorway speeds noticeably faster than the Clio (while sounding quite decent, I must admit), but it lacks the midrange punch of the Clio?s turbo, which made the Clio such a nice long distance car. There?s also a cruise control, but the controls on the indicator stalk are a convoluted mess, and if you happen to need to indicate while accelerating with the cruise control, the acceleration stops until you release it and re-twist the stalk. The cruise control is of the old-fashioned type, that holds the speed when you press it, and it coasts and accelerates, but it lacks a display telling you what speed it?s set at, nor can you quickly tell it to accelerate or coast to a specific speed.
When you?re driving you will undoubtedly encounter corners. And when you turn the wheel in the Corsa, you might think that you?re in a state-of-the-art steer-by-wire car, because the wheel does not feel like it?s connected to a mechanical system at all. The condition of the road, where the wheels are pointing, or any feedback of that kind is nonexistent. The car goes in the direction you point it, and has decent levels of grip, but there?s nothing that inspires confidence in the abilities of the car. The other controls are as lacking in feedback as the steering wheel is, making the whole driving experience feel detached.
Suspension comfort is decent enough, a bit bumpy on motorways, but it soaks up speed bumps almost as good as the C3 did.
All in all it?s not as dreadful as I feared, although it is as dreary. The whole car feels unpolished, hastily thrown together in a half-assed way. From a company that loves to emphasise the fact that they're German, and that they 'live cars', I expected a lot better.