Twin test: Vauxhall Adam S vs R2 rally car

So a little bit of fun here – we thought we’d pitch Vauxhall’s hottest Adam road car against its new R2 rally car. OK, so the hottest road car isn’t that hot – the S has a 1.4-litre 148bhp turbocharged four cylinder that drives the front wheels through a six speed manual gearbox. It’s a lukewarm hatch, basically.

The rally car, as you would expect, is more trick. It’s built in Germany by Opel Motorsport and complies with the FIA’s R2 regulations. It has a 1.6-litre naturally aspirated Ecotec four cylinder that’s been tuned to develop 187bhp and features a carbon airbox, bespoke Bosch ECU, revised cooling etc. Then there’s the five-speed Sadev sequential gearbox, three-way adjustable Reiger dampers, hydraulic handbrake, limited slip differential, AP Racing brakes, Sparco competition seats and a host of other trick bits and bobs that are designed to make this thing as fast through a rally stage (either tarmac or gravel) as possible.

Photography: Simon Thompson

We’re at a sprint track called Curborough. Narrow and twisty, it’s a fun little place for small cars, and if you run it as a figure-eight it’s not far off a mile-long. I have a bit of a drive around and settle on a layout that includes a couple of kerbs that demand to be hit, the circuit’s only high speed corner and a bit of the straight. There’s a heck of a lot of variety packed into about point eight of a mile, although the tight second gear corner predominates.

The Adam S feels sportier inside than you would expect for a city-focused small car. The yellow slab helps, but it’s the seats that really set the tone. The chunky Recaros not only look cracking but do a fine job of holding you in place when you get all carried away by the surprisingly perky handling. However, they’re not standard. No, they’re a £1,610 option, which works out at about 10 per cent of the asking price for the whole car.

This is more like it. Much more serious seats, levers that are ripe for pulling, switches that demand to be toggled, harnesses, carbon fibre and lots of bare metal. The seats are very, very snug, especially once you’re harnessed in tight and the levers for the sequential gearbox and hydraulic handbrake are almost ludicrously tempting, just a few fingers width away from the steering wheel. Weirdly, while I usually slam road car seats as far down as they go, in rally cars I like to sit higher – perhaps I like to see the rock that’s going to rip the sump off before I hit it.

Sorry, couldn’t leave the rally car there – there’s just too much other cool stuff on display from the roof snorkel to the carbon door mirrors. My favourite are the remote reservoir Reiger dampers, though. I had these on my home-grown Hyundai i20 and they’re the single greatest weapon in a rally car’s armoury. Three-way adjustable, the amount of punishment they can soak up, the changes you can make to the handling balance and the outstanding sure-footedness they give the car have to be experienced to be believed.

Look, the Adam S cocks a wheel through corners. It’s very together actually – it doesn’t roll much, has good turn-in grip and although there’s no steering feel it’s more agile and engaging than I expected it to be. Reckon it would be a bit of a hoot around town – the turbo picks up briskly and it seems very threadable. Not sure about the gearchange, though –it’s a bit blunt.

Oof, that’s more like it. Look at the roll! Look how high the rear wheel is in the air! OK, so let’s just say that the adjustable springs and dampers weren’t where you’d have them if you were actually competing. It was too soft, practically scraping its chin on the ground – but of course you can adjust all of that. We didn’t bother because we didn’t want to waste track time – and besides it was quite fun pouring so much pressure on the loaded tyre and seeing just how hard it could grip (very).

As a result it was a bit slower to accept quick direction changes than the road car, but in every other area it made mincemeat of it. It was so adjustable at the limit, and if I braked with my left and kept the power on to activate the diff, the way it pulled through corners was superb. And you get to punch that great gearlever back and forth, use a set of super-strong brakes and occasionally, just for the hell of it, tug the handbrake. Didn’t do anything for the lap time, but it is fun.

Yes, we did run lap times on the two of them and it’ll come as no surprise whatsoever to learn that the road car lost out to the rally car. It has less grip, a lower power to weight ratio, weaker brakes, a slower gearchange and so on.

The Adam S got itself around Curborough in a not-disgraceful 58.5 seconds, hitting a maximum of 72.7mph and pulling a peak of 1.02g, which isn’t bad at all for a car that takes 8.5 seconds to hit 62mph.

The R2 got itself around in 54.1 seconds, 4.4 seconds quicker. I reckon at least one second of that is attributable to the dampers. They allowed me to take so much more kerb through most corners, soaking up the punishment without ever throwing the car off line. When I tried the same trick in the road car it pretty much got bounced off the track. The capabilities of the dampers are what strikes me every time I drive a rally car – they always feel wonderfully supple and yet so precise, plus are able to suck up punishment like you wouldn’t believe.

Not much else to add, but I thought you’d like to see another picture of the R2 car waving a wheel in the air.

Oh, and if you want to see it in real action, Major Motorsport, in partnership with Vauxhall, is entering three of them in the British Rally Championship this year. Last year it won the European Rally Championship R2 class outright.