Vauxhall Corsa Electric review

Prices start at £32,445 for the entry-level Design trim and £34,080 for the mid-spec GS trim, which gets you the smaller motor/battery. The bigger motor/battery starts from £35,475 in mid-spec GS trim, and costs £38,585 in top-spec Ultimate trim.

To give you some context there, an ICE Corsa starts from under £20k. Ooft. Meanwhile a base Peugeot e-208 is more or less the same price.

On lease, you’re looking at around £350, £385, £410 and £450 for each of the above. That's on a four-year agreement with a £5k down payment and 10,000 yearly mileage allowance, through Vauxhall’s own finance scheme. Shop around and you might do better.

What’s the difference between kit?

Design models get 16-inch alloys, auto LED headlights and wipers, rear parking sensors, a 10-inch infotainment display, cruise control and speed limiter, and the usual suite of driver assist technologies, including lane departure warning with lane keep assist and speed sign recognition.

GS models get sportier front and rear body styling, a black roof, badging and Corsa lettering, and 17-inch (again black) alloys. Keyless entry and start, sports style front seats, front parking sensors, a rear view parking camera, wireless charger and tinted rear windows are also thrown in.

Top of the range Ultimate trim (as seen in the pictures above) receives the same black styling tweaks as GS trim plus matrix LED headlights (which auto block off the beam to avoid blinding oncoming traffic), heated steering wheel and seats with massage function, much Alcantara trim, plus adaptive cruise control.

What’s the best spec?

Ask yourself this: how often are you really going to be travelling over 200 miles on a single charge? If the answer (as we suspect it is for most people) is 'rarely', we reckon you’re better off with the less powerful/smaller batteried variant in Design trim. That’s because it’s easily got the most stomachable price tag, plus the smaller 16-inch alloys which offer the best ride. It’s well equipped too.

And even Ultimate spec can’t inject any life into the cabin, so why bother? We’re not sure we could justify spending not far off £40k on a Corsa anyway, so we’d stay clear.

Any options worth my time?

Vauxhall’s philosophy these days is to keep it simple. So your only options are a Winter Pack with heated seats and heated steering wheel on mid-spec GS cars, a panoramic sunroof on top-spec Ultimates (£500), two-tone metallic paint (£600), fancier two-tone metallic paint (£700) and a backup charging cable (£584). And that’s yer lot.