First of all I would just like to say that I am a girly girl and don't know much about cars other than how to drive one and what colour they are, so if you're looking for a review that is going to be full of top gear jargen discussing the effectiveness of suspension, four wheel drive and horse power (whatever all that is) , you are in the wrong place. This is just a girls general opinion of her car.

So, if you're still willing to read my review........

During my final year at university my beloved Nissan Micra decided that it had had enough of the frequent long drives from my family home to uni and back again and died. I was very upset. I loved my micra, many people had told me that it was an "old persons car" but I didn't care, I loved it! As I previously mentioned it was my final year at uni, so as you can image I was pretty poor but I needed a car quick. Thankfully I happened to have a friend that worked in a car dealership that managed to get me a decent enough part exchange price for my car considering it barely evan ran and said she could do me a deal on one of the cars on the forecourt. Obviously, with my lack of funds I chose the cheapest car I could find which happened to be a 2004 Vauxhall Corsa Life in sea breeze blue. I took it for a test drive and as I was in such a rush to get back on the road I decided it would do and went ahead with the purchase without asking any questions other than "how do I open the boot?". You're probably thinking that it was very silly of me to buy something so expensive in such haste, well you would be right. It is now a decision that I semi-regret. I signed all the necessary paperwork and attempted to drive home in my poor micra to wait for the car to be ready to be collected in two days time, which happened to be when I had to go back to uni. So I caught the dreaded train back to uni and my new car was waiting for me when I got home (thanks to my dad).

The first thing I noticed about the corsa in comparison to my micra was that it seemed a lot smaller and lower to the ground, and to begin with I felt very cramped when driving (not something that is easy to achieve given that I am only a mere 5ft 2" in height). However, this is something that I have now adjusted to and now feel comfortable driving my car. In my opinion the Corsa also felt 'cheap' compared to the Micra with regards to it's interior design. My Micra had lovely, chunky windscreen wiper/head light/indicator light handles (I'm afraid I don't know the proper name for them) on either side of the steering wheel and in comparison the ones in the corsa felt like feeble bits of plastic (of course it isn't made of feeble bits of plastic, I'm sure it's all much more complex than that but thats just how it felt to me).

One thing I was very impressed with was the fact that the Corsa displays the current temperature. Now I'm not 100% sure if it is the inside or outside temperature that it refers to but either way I thought it was a nifty feature as I hadn't had a car that had done that before and when it reaches 3 degrees or below a little snow flake appears to ward you about ice on the road (I am aware that a lot of the newer cars have this feature and many many more). The corsa will also display the time and date and what radio station or CD you are listening to. If you look down from the display screen which is in the centre of the dashboard you will see the CD/radio device. It is fairly self explanitary how to use is as there are two big buttons in the middle; one reading 'tuner' and the other reading 'CD' so all you need to do is decide what you want to listen to and then either insert a CD or adjust the radio station using the arrow buttons that are loated with the two previously mentiond big buttons or choose a pre-selected and saved radion station using the numbered buttons slightly to the right of the CD player. You can also change track, radio station and adjust the volume using buttons on the steering wheel (another luxury I hadn't experienced in a car of my own before).

My car does not have air conditioning but it does have your usual hot/cold air fans with the options of having them blow said air either on to you windscreen, feet or face or a combination of the three (again I'm sure it's much more technical than that and any car fanatic would be able to describe it better). However, in my opinion the lack of air conditioning isn't a disadvantage to the car as I like to have the windows open when it's nice and warm (the windows are electric by the way - always a bonus when compared to the old style 'keep fit' windows that required a small workout to wind down).

Cosmetically, the car is quite nice really. My interior is black with a slight grey-ish pattern on the seats. There is a nice little compartment below where the CD player and heating adjustment buttons are that is really usful for storing bits of rubbish or spare change or lipgloss etc and fairly spacious door compartments too, also good for storing whatever rubbish you happen to have in your hand while entering/driving your car that you need to put somewhere - mine are generally filled with sweetie wrappers and petrol receipts.

One thing I noticed instantly about the car was the noise. My Micra was such a lovely quiet car that if you were sat idle in it you had to give the accelorator a quick tap just to check the engine was still running - a complete contrast to the corsa. I found the corsa to be very very loud. At first I thought it was just because I was used to such a quiet car that I noticed it more but as time went on I didn't feel that I became accustomed to the noise like I expected and it continued to irritate me, it sounded more like it had a louder diesel engine than the average petrol engine that it actually had. So I asked a mechanic friend about it one day and he told me that it only had three cylinders instead of four like most cars have (it was made like that, it doesn't have one missing). Now I have to admit that I have absolutely no idea what the technical term is for these cylinders or what their purpose is, I simply know that having three of them instead of four is the reason my car is loud and can only assume that that means that my car is from the more budget end of the model, which I can understand seeing as it does only have a 998cc engine.

You can fit a total of five people into my car and I think it is spacious enough to fit three small adults ot two large adults comfortably in the back (especially behind my drivers seat where there is ample leg room thanks to my short stature) and the boot is a fairly decent size too, big enough to fill with bags after a good old shopping spree.

When it is just me in the car, it can be quiet speedy despite it's small engine size, however with a car full of people it does understandably become quite sluggish when attempting to gain speed. It's quick enough for me though as I don't need a fast car, I'm not the type race around the streets fast and furious style. An additional bonus to the small engine size is that it makes it quite a cheap car to run, if I didn't have to travel such a long distance to work I would hardly ever have to put petrol in it., it's very economic.

My corsa does have power steering and if you can block out the noise with some decent music is actually not to bad to drive at all, although I have to say it's not quiet as nice to drive as my micra was. It also has remote central locking but also has a keyhole on the drivers door to enable you to unlock the car manually, presumably should the batteries ever run out in the remote key.
Overall, it's an ok car that I have to admit has grown on me slightly since I bought it a year ago. I wouldn't say it's anything special and since I got it on finance I often wonder if I would have been better off paying £2000 more over a longer period for a newer model with better/more features, but whats done is done and in all fairness I have had no problems with the car. I think it would be really suitable for a first car as it's small enough to park easily and simple enough to use and get to grips with. It is also cheap to tax and insure.