If you can’t arrive at the British Grand Prix in a helicopter, you might as well do so in a head-turning car. So I opted, with remarkable success as it turned out, not for a Bugatti Veyron (two of which were parked in close proximity, the motoring equivalent of turning up in the same dress as Victoria Beckham), but for a Vauxhall Corsa VXR.
For a small car that looks as if it has been designed by a styling committee, the amount of attention it got on the road – and not just from the expected young male demographic – was extraordinary.
The attention is well-deserved. The Corsa VXR is a terrific package: its 1.6litre engine produces 189bhp and with full-throttle torque now at 266Nm, getting up a head of steam is startlingly swift. The interior is high quality, too, and the leather Recaro seats that house side airbags from the Lamborghini Gallardo, are both comfortable and supportive.
The VXR brand evolved through the VX racing team that has been so successful in the British Touring Car Championship and most models in the lineup these days have a VXR variant: the company earned much kudos from parents when it produced a VXR version of the mini-MPV Meriva, rightly noting that not everyone expels the desire for an engaging driving experience along with the placenta.
And yet despite all this positivity, Vauxhall – or to be correct, Opel, its parent brand – still managed to go blundering in with all the elegance of a Sintra at the launch of the new Agila earlier this week in Venice.
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The 2008 model looks good and instead of sharing a platform with the woeful Suzuki Wagon R, it is now based on a shortened version of the Suzuki Swift platform which will become the Suzuki Splash.
So far so promising, but if you are a man, you can stop reading now and go and buy something else instead. Because, according to Opel’s marketing guru, Alain Visser, this is one for the ladies: “Young and youthful women are Opel’s first target group with the new Agila. This modern urban car perfectly suits their city lifestyle as it combines compact dimensions with a stylish exterior, high levels of functionality and plenty of driving fun.”
Let’s hope Vauxhall takes a different tack here, otherwise that’s half its customer base gone before it’s even started. And, of course, not all women want to be told that this is something especially for them (we have skirts for those occasions when we want to underline the gender difference), so that’s another percentage gone. And I bet there won’t even be a VXR version. Oh well. Does my bum look big in this car?