Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 LS

I bought this car 2 years ago, it is a 54 plate and only had one previous owner, my first car and i was initially pleased with it, it is so light to drive, quiet and nippy, within 6 months the cylinder head gasket blew which cost me £500, following that the radiotor broke.. then i had an oil leak..6 months after this the timing chain went which cost a further £500 as it is such a massive part, guy in the garage explained corsas are notorius for these faults and explained he would never reccomend any one to buy a corsa as they are so poorly built and these faults are extremely common, a year from this my car sounds like a tractor and again it is back in the garage and ive been told timing chain has gone yet again and also the exhaust has blew, these cars are cheap to buy but yet so unreliable and a fortune to repair. GOODBYE CORSA

I have had my Vauxhall Corsa LS 1.2 1996 for 2 years now. Before i owned it my brother owned it and before my brother his friend had it. Since the time i have had this car there has been not a single problem with it apart from when i crashed it and i needed to rebuild the all front of it.

When it came to rebuilding the front of my corsa it was not to expensive, i managed to to get a new radiator for £35 which was brand new, and a set of new headlights which were around £50. All together to get my corsa back on the road was around £300 dont forget thats including the bonnet and body work being sorted out.

The Corsa B is a great car. Reliable, cheap, and if any thing did go wrong its cheap to fix.

Overall I have been pleased with my Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 LS apart from the jerkiness in the wet weather. It is good on petrol and the insurance is low. Although a small car its amazing what you can fit in it. I got a baby, the driver, a passenger and a full sized washing machine in it at a squeeze by putting one of the rear seats down!

The car I had was a Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 SXI.

I had done less than 800 miles in the car and it had been in the garage five times. When I started the engine, sometimes it would rev really high, the revs would then drop and it would cut out. The dealer was happy to inspect the car under warranty. Even though the car went into the dealer five times, the problem was never rectified.

I put this down to a poorly designed engine - typical Vauxhall in my opinion. When I got rid of this car I bought a Volkswagen Polo 1.2 E - even though it is lower specification than the Vauxhall Corsa, it is a much better car.

In my opinion the Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 LS doesn't compete with it's rivals! The engine whilst very well designed and with long service intervals seems to hiccup when you pull away and needs 3000RPM+ to really get going! Perhaps a VVTi version is needed? There is no proper automatic gearbox in the 1.0/1.2 range only the 1.4 (cambelted) engine has a proper hydraulic gearbox (at the time of writing?) But on the plus side, after 4 years and 29,000 miles I've only changed the wipers/headlight bulbs and replaced the front brake pads which isn't bad at all - it has also never failed to start first time!

I have to admit that I had been more or less pressured into buying the Corsa as it is the best I could get with the money I had at the time, but I have grown fond of the car since then and will certainly consider another Corsa when this one finally gives up on me.

The Vauxhall Corsa is a great little car. My wife loves hers, which is a 1996 model, but there is one very alarming intermittent problem. The car stops every now and then without warning. At traffic lights, roundabouts, in fact anywhere she may slow down and take her foot of the accelerator. She feels very embarrassed, as people behind think it is her fault.