The Vehicles Earth

By Tim Pollard (artist's impression by Christian Schulte)
First Official Pictures
04 May 2012 10:37

Vauxhall and Opel will announce the name of its new city car - codenamed Junior and bound to replace the Agila - next week.

It has issued an unusual comic strip announcing the fact that the Vauxhall Junior's name will be confirmed on 8 May 2012.
So what's this picture of the Vauxhall Junior doing here?

That's CAR's artist's impression of the new GM Europe city car.

Strip away the marketing waffle in this comic strip and there are a few nuggets about the Junior. For instance, the three-door Fiat 500 rival is a four-seater and stretches out to 3.7m long - the same footprint as a modern Mini.

Vauxhall confirms it will go on sale in early 2013 and makes great play of the fact that it'll be 'very colourful', hinting at its personalisation programme.

European design chief Mark Adams has previously told CAR: 'We have a heritage in small cars, but we wanted to do this in a contemporary way. It’s modern but with real personality. We want to show we are not in a straightjacket.

'Cars like the Junior will make people realise we are really pushing the Opel-Vauxhall brand. If we’d have tried to introduce it before Insignia, it probably wouldn’t have worked. Now we have the quality, and we’re flirting with more character and personality.’
And what will the Vauxhall Junior be called?

Nobody's saying until next week. The bizarre comic strip suggests that it'll stick with the 'a' sound at the end, like Corsa, Astra and Insignia. The Allegra name has been bandied around, but then Junior kind of ends in a similar sound.