New front 'Vizor' leads bold redesign for 2023 Vauxhall Corsa

The facelifted Vauxhall Corsa will arrive in the second half of 2023

British brand to give UK's best-selling supermini new 'Vizor' face and tech improvements

The Vauxhall Corsa will receive a major mid-life refresh this year and gain the ‘Vizor’ grille that defines the Vauxhall Astra and Vauxhall Mokka. 

Named the country’s second-most-popular car in 2022, the Corsa will get a bold new face that adopts slimline LED headlights to match its new front fascia. 

“We’re really making a big modern statement in how it looks, but at the same time there’s a lot of familiarity,” vice-president of design Mark Adams told Autocar. 

The changes mean the Corsa will continue to play a major role in rebuilding brand awareness for Vauxhall and, coupled with the new Vauxhall Astra released last year, “people will start to see way more [Vauxhalls] that have the new look and feel”, added Adams. 

In 2017, the Corsa was the first Vauxhall to move away from GM architecture and onto a PSA platform. However, it continued on the design path that had been set under GM, and big changes to the brand’s visual identity only came in 2021 with the second-generation Mokka and its radically different look. 

Other design elements of the revamped Corsa have yet to be revealed, but Adams confirmed it won’t have a retro look, adding that he doesn’t want designs that look backwards: “We want to reinvent the brand… to appeal [to new audiences].

“We want to keep our customer base but, at the same time, we’ve got to appeal to a whole new generation of people. And so we’ve got to be seen to be progressive, modern and in touch with what customers really want.” 

When the refreshed model arrives, the Vauxhall Corsa Electric is in line for a bigger battery: most likely the same 55kWh item being introduced to the technically identical Peugeot e-208, which in the French car offers a 248-mile range. The petrol Corsa is likely to keep the same 74bhp and 99bhp three-pots as now. 

Meanwhile, Adams said the retired Insignia will be replaced by “something completely different” and a car like the Manta is in the works for the second half of the decade. 

He added that hatchbacks will remain in Vauxhall’s range and hinted at incoming cars that people wouldn’t expect from Vauxhall.

**Corsa GSe could serve as hot electric successor to Corsa GSi**

The updated Corsa could spawn an electrified Vauxhall Corsa GSe performance model, following the Astra GSe and Grandland GSe. Those cars are plug-in hybrids but meant as a ‘stepping stone’ towards pure-electric GSe models. The firmer, sportier range-topper would serve as a zero-emission successor to the previous-generation Vauxhall Corsa GSi.

This would sit at the top of the Corsa range – in a similar vein to the Astra GSe and Mokka GSe – and get improvements in the form of sharper handling, a tweaked, lowered chassis and uprated performance.

When it arrives, it will join the recently announced Vauxhall Astra Electric. The model's first electric powertrain delivers 258 miles of range from a 54kWh battery.

Pricing for the updated Corsa line-up is likely to increase from the current £18,015 starting point but stay below £20,000 – keeping it positioned as Vauxhall’s entry-level model. The current electric variant starts from £31,000.

Any hot EV variant, therefore, is likely to hit the £35,000 mark, in line with increases from other models that have received the GSe treatment.

The new Corsa will be revealed in the first few months of 2023, ahead of a market launch in the second half of the year.