Very few cars these days seem entirely happy to be themselves. Manufacturers - looking to play the market as broadly as they can - confront you with vehicles that appear to be in the middle of an identity crisis, which those vehicles endure with varying degrees of fortitude and cheerfulness: an all-terrain estate car miserably imprisoned in the body of a hatchback; an executive saloon that yearns to free the sports car within; a people carrier that knows it should have been a bread van and will become one as soon as the surgery is possible.
Even the Vauxhall Corsa - a phenomenally popular car with good reason to be content with itself - is, in its latest form, partly hassled by anxieties about what it isn't, and in a way that will be familiar to children: it's a small car that wishes it were big.
You may have seen some of Vauxhall's extensive advertising for the Corsa, which pursues this theme, and in which Griff Rhys Jones, as some sort of alarmingly bearded über-nerd, attempts to convince himself - and us - that, although the Corsa doesn't share the stretch limo's capacity for a Jacuzzi and a cocktail bar, it is actually roomy enough for the kind of life you are likely to lead in it, if only you would stop dreaming.
Translated into bare terms, the message of the campaign is that the new Corsa is perfectly adequate. But you can see how "The Vauxhall Corsa: it'll do" wouldn't necessarily have heated public enthusiasm to the kind of levels that Vauxhall probably has in mind. Hence Rhys Jones and the babe-strewn Jacuzzi, working comic overtime.
It will probably, however, take more than a comedian in a ginger beard to imbue the Corsa with animal magnetism. It's just not that kind of vehicle - as quick as its high- powered, light body might fly, and as coolly grooved as its front bonnet might be. It's the car your parents might buy you, when what you really wanted was a Renault Clio. Or a moped.
And you would understand their logic. It's not necessarily going to be the first target for hot-wirers. It's packed full of safety furniture, including that canny Vauxhall mechanism that disengages the pedals to spare your feet and legs in a crunch. It doesn't have the kind of features or profile that are likely to make its drivers feel that they are either Jenson Button at Imola or Dan Aykroyd in The Blues Brothers. You'll be home by midnight. It's a sensible option.
And hats off to Vauxhall for producing what I believe to be the first car to turn to television for influence in a key aspect of its design. Not to programmes seen on television, you understand, but to the set itself. Vauxhall claims that the rear window of the car has "something of a modern TV-screen look". Part Vauxhall, part 48-inch Panasonic: now, there's a hybrid worth thinking about.
The back view offers by far the car's most handsome angle. The rear lights bracket the window, which means that the brake lights are hoisted up high, like flags of surrender. By rights, buses and lorries should see you brake and thus fail to run into you. But on those occasions when people don't see you stopping, the design remains a smart idea: you won't be spending money replacing cracked lights because these are well removed from the likely biffing zone.
Seen from almost any other angle, however, the car's shape is unlikely to leap out at you screaming: "Adore me!" It's one of those quiet everycars, a bubble of European steel - for which, of course, there is a substantial market, most people having little or no ambition to own a car that turns heads. The three-door model is more pleasant to look at than the five-door, on which they have squeezed in a third side-window that is roughly the shape of the badge denoting crew membership on the SS Enterprise. So much does it resemble an afterthought that people may well think you put it in yourself, post-purchase, in an unguarded act of DIY.
It is true, as Rhys Jones intimates, that the car feels roomy. It is slightly wider and taller than previous versions and you won't need to arm wrestle your passenger for possession of the gearstick. There seems to be a little more light and air around than there is in the regular hatchback. However, whether this necessarily justifies the installation of big-car gimmicks, such as the satellite navigation system that was blinking away in the model I drove, is not entirely clear. Given the kind of jobs one is likely to use the Corsa for, I'm not sure how often one would need to be in touch with a satellite for guidance. When was the last time you got lost coming home from the supermarket?
Other cars, of course, manage to be small without minding. Consider the sunny disposition of the Fiat Punto. The dependable Corsa has little of the Punto's affable spark. But purchasers who share Rhys Jones's utilitarian disposition may readily sacrifice that for a few extra centimetres of elbow room.
The lowdown
Vauxhall Corsa 1.2i
Price: £8,495
Top speed: 106.2 mph
Acceleration: 0-60 in 12 seconds
Consumption: 44.8 mpg (combined)
At the wheel: Jack Straw's son
On the stereo: Eminem
En route for: Marks & Spencer
