• Five-door-only bodyshell boosts access
• Rear passenger and boot space on par with rivals
• Interior storage a bit lacking

How much space is there?

An acceptable amount for the class. Vauxhall completely redesigned the Corsa, making it lower and longer than its predecessor. It’s fractionally narrower, too, although it looks wider thanks to the way it’s been styled. Vauxhall also increased the Corsa’s wheelbase by pushing the wheels out to the corners of the car, which has liberated more room inside for passengers and luggage.

Space in the rear is average. You get about as much as a Ford Fiesta and Renault Clio, but not as much as a SEAT Ibiza. A six-foot adult can sit behind a similarly sized driver, but they won’t be able to stretch out much. Children should be fine, and there are two Isofix points to make fitting child seats easy.

Surprisingly, larger drivers may find it difficult to access the front seats. Long-legged drivers need to push the seat a long way back to get comfortable, putting the backrest behind the B-pillar, which impedes visibility slightly.

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Boot space and storage

The Vauxhall Corsa’s boot measures 309 litres, which is six litres more than you get in its main rival, the Ford Fiesta. However, there are options out there with more space in the back, such as the Renault Clio and the SEAT Ibiza which have 391-litre and 355-litre boots respectively.

More annoyingly, the Corsa’s boot isn’t particularly clever. There’s no false floor to mask a hidden storage area and the rear seats merely flop forwards onto their squabs, leaving a sizable hump in the load floor.

Interior storage is below par for the class, too. There aren’t many storage bins – and the ones you get are tiny. The glovebox is quite small, the door bins are shallow and the storage box in the centre armrest is barely big enough to hold a wallet.

The tray in the centre console also isn’t deep enough to accommodate a modern smartphone so, when you connect your phone to the infotainment system via a cable, it rests on the socket, putting pressure on your phone’s charging port.

Safety

• Plenty of safety kit as standard…
• … but only four Euro NCAP stars
• Matrix LED lights a first for a supermini

Like its sister car, the Peugeot 208, the Corsa achieved a four-star Euro NCAP safety rating. That’s good, but some rivals can do better. The Renault Clio and Ford Fiesta, for example, both bagged top marks in their crash tests.

The Vauxhall Corsa lost a star for it seats. Euro NCAP testers found that the car’s head restraints didn’t protect the front occupants from whiplash as well as they should.

You get a lot of standard safety equipment, though, including autonomous emergency braking, lane-keeping assist, cruise control and traffic sign recognition. LED headlights are another standard fixture, which offer great visibility at night.

The range-topping Ultimate model features Vauxhall’s upgraded ‘Intellilux’ Matrix LED headlights. Basically, these lights can ‘cut out’ oncoming cars from their beam pattern, illuminating more of the road without dazzling oncoming motorists. We’ve sampled them and found them to work very well.

Watch the Vauxhall Corsa’s crash test video