My new car

I've had my new Vauxhall Corsa Breeze 1.2 3-door since last month, so I thought it was about time to write about it.

Driving it is good. I’m a large guy, and for a small car the Corsa has lots of interior space especially in the front seat. It has a very comfortable driving position with adjustable seats and steering wheel. The performance is getting better and better. The engine is beginning to really feel more flexible and revs well. The fuel consumption has gone from 26mpg on the first tank of petrol to 40mpg on the second. So that's going in the right direction too.

Very quiet to drive, not much road noise and a good sounding radio/CD player. Nice handling with no surprises. Good quality feel to the controls though the indicators and windscreen wipers/washers take a while to get used to.

I've just taken it on my first reasonable motorway run and it felt like it had enough power even if 5th gear to keep up. In fact with the smoothness and quietness it seemed to want go over 80mph all the time. 70mph is 3,000rpm. It plays my iPod through the radio and the MP3 music CDs show the track names which I didn't expect. Also my TomTom One satnav fits nicely in the cup/cash/card holder in front of the gearstick and still gets a good signal. So it's not in view when I park (easy to cover with a fuel receipt).

Why did the make the numbers on the speedometer and rev counter look exactly the same? Couldn’t they afford to paint a few more zeros on the rev counter to distinguish it a bit?

To begin with the performance was terrible. I expected that as I test drove a brand new 1.2 SXi and it was the same. However now the engine is run in (over 1,000 miles) it is getting better. Power kicks in nicely between 3000 and 4000rpm. Lower than that nothing much happens in higher gears. Is this typical of the Twinport valve technology? I would have liked a Breeze 1.4 which is not available, but remember the 1.2 is in fact 1,229cc and the 1.4 is 1,364cc so the difference isn't as much as it seems at first.

Other benefits are very light steering when manoeuvring, easy gearbox and low insurance group. Overall I’m very happy with it. It does what I want and is a good replacement for my seven year old Fiesta.