my mertle (Vauxhall Corsa (pre 2000))

Name: barbie84

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Product:	Vauxhall Corsa (pre 2000)
Date:	12.03.08 (189 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great little car

Disadvantages: none that we have found

We have had our vauxhal corsa that long now it even has a name, mertle. Everything we own ends up with a name.

I brought my corsa back in 2002 and paid £3500 for it, it is the 3 cylinder ecotech engine 1 liter well not quite a liter but rounded up to that on my log book. It is a 3 door in red with not a lot of mod cons but has been literaly indestructable. I have brought a few cars since then and kept donating this to my hubby and saying i wanted to get rid of it but keep ending up with it back as it is so reliable.

Poor mertle has been barbied for 6 years now and is still going strong.

The little 1 liter well 900 and something engine wasnt quite nippy enough for me, i like a lot of botton range talk in my gears, get me to 60 in a flash and i wont ask you to go any faster, but mertle didnt realy do this as he has a small heart in a big body so i have had a performance exhaust system put on him, a max power air filter and had my engine chipped, now mertle has a lot of bottom end talk and will quite happily do 116mph down a motorway without a problem.

I havent had too many problems with mertle concidering the fact that i am a woman driver and very hard on cars, i have had one oil leak which was easily fixed, a sump gasket cost me £30 to get it fixed and was kind of my fault as i got the sump stuck on a mound in one of the fields. oops

I have had 3 air flow censors go but that is down to the chip in my engine that these went and they cost me £120 each to replace.

I have a set of low profile tires on the car at £60 each and for the first 4 years never had any problems but as some of you may already know i am a lead witness in a child abuse case and since that all came out my car has had many a slashed tire but that isnt the cars fault, its vandalism.

Mertle is an r plate so he is almost 10 years old now i think and his plastics have faded to a dull grey but it doesnt help that he is parked under a tree constantly so the sap has added to that but can be easily fixed by painting them which i might get around to doing this summer.

Inside the car the cock pit is realy easy to navigate your way around and has quite a lot of space and leg room, i mean i am 5foot 8 inches tall and dont find mertle uncomfortable at all to drive, the back seats are reasonably sized and you have adequate boot space, this realy is a good small car and copes with all the strain it gets from me quite well.

Driving a corsa isnt at all difficult, he sticks to the road like glue, corners lovely unlike my vitara which ended up on its roof, admittedly it is not the quickest car on the road but is no slouch and is ideal around towns. You could park the thing on a postage stamp and it has that tight a turning circle it will turn completley in a side road without any shunting backwards and forwards.

The only bad part about a corsa is that you can bypass there imobilisers very easily so are a grade 3 insurance risk, i found out how easily when i had my bag pinched at the town and my only set of keys were in the car, a police man told me how to bypass the imobiliser just by disconecting one simple wire and boxing the car was so easy.
I shouldnt realy tell you that should i there might be some car thieves listning.

Saying that though i pay less than £200 a year with budget for fully comp insurance and that aint bad.

This is a good all round car, 17 inch wheels look lovely on it but anything bigger and your brushing arches and heading for trouble.

Summary: all in all a brill little car

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