A VAUXHALL rarer than a Rolls-Royce? Vauxhall sports cars are about as rare as it gets. It is 90 years since the company built its last one. The last go-fast car to carry the Vauxhall badge was a hit when plus fours, leather gauntlets and Toad of Toad Hall-type goggles were cutting edge motoring kit.
The thick end of a century later and Vauxhall has come up with sports car No 2. Well, the best things do come to those who wait and in this case the elephantine gestation period has been worth it.
The VX220 Turbo is a four-wheeled motorbike, a skateboard of a car that, if you have the courage and are on the right race track, will take you to 151mph.
More importantly, it will reach 60mph from a standing start in under five seconds and 100mph in under 13 seconds. All for £25,495. Cars with that kind of performance usually carry Latin names, and for heart-stoppingly large prices. However, the VX220 Turbo is what an orange-skinned TV antiques dealer might deem “cheap as chips”.
This is a model with super-car performance for super-bargain money, speed to match badges such as Porsche and Ferrari, without the cost of those prestigious key fobs. Proudly sitting on the nose of the high-speed Vauxhall machine is the griffin badge familiar to hundreds of thousands of Corsa, Astra and Vectra drivers.
This car, though, was engineered, and is built, far from Vauxhall’s mass production plants. The VX220 Turbo is essentially the child of Lotus race car specialists, and it is built by hand at the Lotus HQ in Hethel, Norfolk, alongside the Elise.
The first thing you notice about the car, especially when you are, like me, 6ft 5in tall, is how low it is. Climbing in is an exercise in human origami. Face the car, insert left leg, swivel on ball of right foot, then fold yourself 90 degrees at the waist, duck head, and fall backwards into the seat, remembering to retrieve your right leg dangling outside. Once in, though, it is ridiculously roomy. It takes three days to build each car, and the attention to detail shows.
The interior is sparse but a nice environment, well machined manual window winders (lack of electric windows saves weight) and comfortable racing seats. The steering wheel is tiny but the steering lock is so good that you never need to take your hands off the wheel. Performance is, as promised, exhilarating. The turbo feeds in the power very smoothly. There is no sudden, unnerving burst of power as the turbo kicks in, just a gush of torque and the car takes off. Even though the engine sits behind your head, the noise is well contained.
Vauxhall launched the car at the Catalunya Formula One track near Barcelona, in pouring rain, to see what the car could do. Vauxhall says the car is manageable fun, excitement that can be tamed. And so it is. After taking tuition from the expert drivers Vauxhall laid on, I trundled round Catalunya without mishap. But this is a car that can also bite back. Within hours of Vauxhall and Lotus engineers unveiling the car trackside, three were in bits in the pits, having been spun and crashed. Overambitious motoring journalists, with more confidence than ability, having underrated the track’s slipperiness or the car’s speed, had come to grief. Which is why Vauxhall is offering VX220 Turbo customers driver training at the race tuition school of Jonathan Palmer, a former racer.
Away from the track and out on the road, the VX220 is surprisingly biddable. The clutch is easy to manage, and does not require a hugely-muscled left thigh as in some performance cars. The suspension is engineered for performance, but even on fairly poor Spanish road surfaces it gives a comfortable ride.
Matt Becker, the Lotus senior dynamic engineer, who designed the chassis, says: “A lot of the time people buy these sorts of cars to have fun one day a week at a track day, because you cannot drive that quickly on UK roads. This is a very good track-day tool but one designed for everyday use.
“You can drive it to work during the week, then drive it to the track at the weekend, have a track session and some fun, then drive home. Or you can just enjoy it on country lanes. At the same time it is not an out-and-out track car. We didn’t want to have a car that was so responsive and race-tuned that if you sneezed driving down the motorway you’d end up in the barrier.”
If you do use the car for motorway jaunts, you’d probably do best to send your luggage on ahead. Inside the cockpit there is room for the ubiquitous cup-holder, but only one, lodged between the two seats, and a tiny cubbyhole for luggage to the rear of the engine.
But practical is not what the VX220 Turbo does best. Andrew Cullis, the Vauxhall brand manager, says: “The car is all about pure exhilaration. There is no point having a car like this unless it is truly exciting, with a design that people stop and look at, but we also wanted to make it the ultimate driver’s car.”
Once in the car there are only a few other minor quibbles, other than the fight to get out. The main one is that rear vision is almost non-existent because of big pads behind the driver’s and passenger’s heads and the long body slats that run backwards from the cockpit. The other key disappointment is that the car does not sound mad enough. The exhaust note is not as raucous as the performance leads you to expect it to be.
Who will buy the car? Vauxhall expects 90 per cent of buyers to be men, aged 25 to 55, earning £50,000 or above, and who might otherwise be considering something like an Audi TT, a Honda S2000, BMW3 Cabrio or a Lotus Elise. But if the VX220 Turbo is your idea of a Vauxhall sports car, then best get your order in now — on past form there is not likely to be another one along for a while.
Road test: Vauxhall VX220 Turbo
I thought there was a VX220 already?
There is. Vauxhall introduced a VX220 three years ago with one of the world’s worst TV ad campaigns featuring Griff Rhys Jones in a nappy (don’t ask). But whingers said it did not have enough poke — hence a true sports car complete with turbo for added oomph.
Cheap as chips?
It really is. At £25,495 you get a top speed of 151mph and 0-60mph in 4.7sec, plus a free, humbling driver training day with experts proving you are not as good as you thought you were.
How thirsty?
The car only weighs 930kg thanks to lots of aluminium and plastic bodywork so expect an admirable 33mpg.
Best bit?
Love the exhaust pipes. Sad, I know. The pipes are in the middle of the car’s backside, looking like a huge double-barrelled shotgun.
Next best bit?
The engine and the chassis. The 2-litre 16-valve turbo cracks the 100bhp per litre milestone sports car fans love. All in a Lotus chassis that really handles.
Best gadget?
Just like real racing drivers, you get a snazzy little light on the dashboard that blinks to tell you it is time to change gear.
Worst bit?
The noise — or lack of it. This is a car that should snarl. Rev the engine and heads should turn. Lotus has done such a good job of making the car inoffensive in town, but it sounds like the sheep not the wolf.
What else could I buy?
A Lotus Elise (out and out track car), Toyota MR2 (what personality?), Porsche Boxster (don’t mention hairdressers) or a Ferrari (how much?).
Odd VX220 fact: Although 98 per cent of Astra drivers would happily let someone else drive their car, 25 per cent of VX220 drivers say they would never let anyone but themselves near their pride and joy.
They say: Only Vauxhall’s second real sports car.
We say: What took you so long?
