Certain anniversaries tend to make you feel rather older than others, so how's this to bring some despair to a Friday morning: the Vauxhall Corsa is 25 years old in 2018. A quarter of a century of Corsas, of first cars, modified cars, rally cars and project cars.
What tends to be forgotten about that 1993 launch is that the GSI arrived in the same year, with 1.6-litres and 110 rampaging horsepower. To mark both those anniversaries, Vauxhall has confirmed a new Corsa GSI will arrive later this year.
What it won't be doing, however, is replacing the VXR; instead the GSI will be the slightly sporty one, kind of how SRI used to be to GSI (in the pre-VXR days) if that isn't too confusing. GSI will be like VTR to VTS by the sounds of it, if we're sticking with 20 year-old hot hatch references. Or Peugeot XSI to GTI. You know, the good old days. Moving on...
Details on the Corsa GSI are currently sparse, although we can likely expect a visual makeover along the lines of the new Insignia GSI and, naturally, less power than the 205hp Corsa VXR. It has been suggested that it may use the 1.4-litre turbo from the Adam S, hopefully with a bit more than the 150hp it offers; splitting the difference leaves 177hp, still a decent enough figure for a B-segment hatch when the old Fiesta ST had 180 (without overboost).
Given the precarious predicament of Vauxhall under PSA at the moment, further commitment to performance-orientated models should be welcomed. The Corsa GSI will face tough opposition though, from the new Suzuki Swift Sport, the sub-ST Ford Fiestas and the VW Up GTI, even if the latter is a smaller car. More news when we have it.
1 / 2