ONE model that has driven rather stylishly upmarket is the Vauxhall Corsa.

Once the darling of the boy racer, the Corsa hasproceded onwards and upwards to be much more stylish and desirable choice than some previous generations.

No longer the baby of the Vauxhall range, Corsa fills the bill in the supermini market in surprisingly glowing terms.

Now in its fourth generation, Corsa is still in ding-dong combat with the Ford Fiesta for top sales slot in Great Britain.

The UK is now the lead market for Corsa by a long way and one of its secrets is its wide market appeal. I heard it once said of the newer generations of Corsa - ‘Young people drive them to look more sophisticated and older people drive them to look younger.'

Sounds a good recipe to me.

Compact dimensions, a stylish exterior and a lot of room inside are also part of Corsa's market pull.

Under the bonnet, new engines include a thoroughly modern 1.0-litre, three-cylinder ECOTEC Direct Injection petrol Turbo which meets the latest Euro 6 emisions directives.

The compact ECOTEC ‘triple' is the only production three-cylinder engine on the market with a sump-mounted counter-rotating balancer shaft, making it especially smooth and resonance-free and a class benchmark for reduced noise, vibration and harshness.

High-pressure direct fuel injection is combined with an ultra-compact turbocharging system and continuously variable valve timing (intake and exhaust sides) to make an astonishingly smooth and punchy little engine which weighs in at just 106kg thanks to its lightweight, all-aluminium construction, with a cylinder head-integrated exhaust manifold.

This was a five door 1.0T SRi and some years ago the thought of the coveted performance SRi badge being applied to a car with a three-cylinder engine would have been treated with derision.

Not so now because this little unit punches above its weight with 0-62mph coming up in just 10.4 seconds with 115ps on tap in the test car. A top speed of 121mph imparts a hot hatch feel to this remarkable car.

To me the proof of the pudding with three-cylinder cars is the torque factor and the 1.0T Corsa did not disappoint with a good amount of torque generated at just 1,800rpm.

With start/stop technology as standard, the 1.0-litre ECOTEC achieves 65.7mpg combined and CO2emissions as low as 100g/km. And it is all done in the best possible taste via a smooth six-speed manual gearbox.

If I could find room for improvement it was in the automatic Start/Stop which was not the slickest I have encountered.