Story: DAVID WILKINS

NEVER mind the ‘Stoptober’ campaign to kick smoking; Vauxhall’s latest Corsa appears to have kicked the habit of refuelling.

If your business gets one of these as a company car, the Corsa will simply take you for miles and miles and…

How so? Vauxhall has tweaked the diesel engine on the Corsa 1.3 CDTI ecoFLEX allowing some 3-door models to deliver a welcome and business-friendly 85.6 mpg and CO2 emissions of 88g/km – that’s 2.4 mpg and 6g/km better than before.

• The latest Vauxhall Corsa gives drivers an astonishing 85.6mpg and a company car tax banding of 13% for the next two tax years

A 95 PS 3-door Corsa 1.3CDTI Exclusiv ecoFLEX with Start/Stop and a list price of £14,900 will cost 20 per cent taxpayers £32.17 per month in company car tax in 2012/13.

So not only will there be hardly any fuel to pay for, there will be virtually nothing in company car tax too.

For those who want a technical explanation, among the changes Vauxhall has made are a variable displacement oil pump that only delivers the pressure required and no more, low viscosity transmission oil and altered engine mapping. There’s also a reworked gearbox and fuel-saving low rolling resistance tyres, and there are also some suspension improvements for all Corsas aimed at improving ride and handling.

Vauxhall says that since the Corsa ecoFLEX was introduced five years ago, economy and emissions have been improved by 26 per cent.