VAUXHALL CORSA

Our likeable supermini has delusions of grand tourer

- JACK HARRISON

A search for a first car for my sister turned up an interesting titbit. I'd gone to look at a Citroën C1 in Bournemouth for her, with the seller flogging it on behalf of his daughter. "She's just started a new job in Southampton, and you just can't do that in something this small," he said. "You need something bigger." As someone who used to do 500 miles a week in a Fiat 500, this baffled me no end.

It wasn't just a one-off, either. A short trawl of a few model-specific small car Facebook groups revealed a fair few examples of people thinking along the same lines. I can't really understand why.

I bring this up because most of my trips seem to involve big motorway miles, and the Corsa comprehensively ignores the above way of thinking. It almost feels like it was designed to be a long-distance mini-GT in the style of an Aston Martin Cygnet. Okay, maybe that's taking it a bit far (metaphorically speaking), but this car is seriously impressive for, well, a Corsa.