Vauxhall has revealed a new Corsa GSE... and it's an 800bhp, 199mph Vision GT car

According to our calculations, there have been 35 Vision Gran Turismo concepts since the first debuted in GT6 back in 2013. Deliriously extrovert things in the main, there has never been a Vauxhall Vision GT, and you would have got long odds on one ever appearing – especially with a Corsa badge.

But here it is, and magnificently deranged it is, too. It’s powered by two electric motors making a total of 800bhp and 590lb ft of torque, all-wheel drive aiding frankly barmy acceleration – 0-62mph in two seconds – and a top speed of 199mph. Surely a few little sim tweaks could have got that to 200, no?

Although it will land in GT7 this autumn, the Corsa GSE Vision Gran Turismo isn’t just a piece of high-end conceptual lunacy confined to the video game realm. The GSE bit of its name gives you a clue about the wider intent, as the company continues to redefine its performance sub-brand for the electric era. As comically steroidal as it may appear, the group’s new STLA global BEV platform underpins it, so if you look really closely you’ll spy hints of the next Corsa production car.

Mostly, though, the GSE concept is channelling Eighties Group B WRC vibes along with the obligatory Gran Turismo techno slam, and plays brilliantly fast and loose with Vauxhall (and Opel’s) ‘bold and pure’ design philosophy. Someone has clearly had a lot of fun, but there’s a hard-won sharpness and precision here, too. As with Hyundai’s N Vision 74, the ‘want one’ factor is high.

TopGear.com had a studio preview and can confirm that this little beastie hits all the right notes in the flesh. Highlights include its interlocking forms, the yellow sections scything audaciously through the pearl white areas. The front in particular is an ingenious shovel-nosed reimagining of a car’s form that capitalises on the absence of an engine. (The batteries are under the floor.) The visor nose treatment has been around a while, but it peaks here, in more ways than one. The Griffin emblem is illuminated and sits at the centre of another fresh design signature, the ‘Compass’, which emanates out and provides the car’s visual backbone.

It’s echoed at the rear, where the ‘Compass’ finds expression in the Vauxhall badge and the brake light. You may not notice that at first, though, not with a giant yellow diffuser and rear spoiler to hoover up the eyeballs. And the aero’s active, adjusting the amount of available downforce according to the requirements. The spoiler doubles as an airbrake.

Note also the profusion of triangular elements, including a wheel design that echoes the alloys on the Eighties Nova SRi. They’re aero wheels but aren’t fully faired-in for fear of hurting brake performance. The wheels are 21in upfront, black and yellow, the rears 22in and finished in white over yellow.

Other OG Nova/Corsa callbacks include the blistered arches which help tidy up turbulent air-flow. They’re made of  a material supplied by composites specialist Bcomp. It’s laid up like carbon fibre but done with a flax material that’s 40 per cent more sustainable.

“You could lift the white piece off and still drive the car. There’s a sharp chassis sitting beneath the more sculpted elements,” long-standing design chief Mark Adams explains. “We didn’t want to go completely over the top with the video game stuff. We wanted to blend the technical with beauty, and keep some softer shapes and forms, not get too brutal. It’s about finding sharp, meaningful transitions between the surfaces.”

The interior is equally powerful, and unapologetically racy. You climb over fat sills, drop into a seat whose upper part is fixed to the roll cage, then peer through the oblong wheel at the head-up display. It’s deliberately minimal; because the seat is fixed, it’s the pedals that are adjustable. Other information is projected onto the illuminated fabrics that cover the dashboard and door inserts. ‘Painting with light’, its creators call it. But we like the exposed screw heads, too.

There are visible structural elements inside, mirroring the approach on the exterior. There’s also a boost mode, for an additional 80bhp for up to four seconds. It can be recharged in four 20 second segments. The battery, by the way, is 82kWh capacity, the car’s overall weight just 1,170kg.

“We threw it open to the design team, really encouraged them to express themselves,” Adams says of the design process. “That was about 12 months ago. Then we narrowed it down to five or six and let them build CAD models, which is a really fast process these days. This isn’t just about the next Corsa, we’re hinting at other things in the future portfolio. We’ll bring some of the surfacing you can see on this car and the graphic elements into future models.

"There are lots of things we can do, but I’ll leave that to your imagination.”

An 800bhp, 199mph electric Corsa will do for now.