Vauxhall Viva Rocks SUV-look city car now on sale for £11,530

The perfect toughened-up urban city car: it’s Vauxhall’s Rover Streetwise

Vauxhall Viva RocksIt seems no car sector is safe from getting an SUV makeover these days. Not many people demand a city car be tough enough to go deep off road, but the crossover look is still appealing – and Vauxhall’s responded by launching the Viva Rocks.

Based on the regular Viva city car, it gets a raised ride height and a tough set of body cladding, including black plastic bumpers instead of the regular body-colour ones. The wheels are a unique 15-inch design, they sit beneath beefier wheelarches, and it even gets a set of silver roof rails.

There’s just one model of Viva Rocks, costing £11,530. The price is more city car level than full-blown crossover SUV, which will appeal, and Vauxhall says ordering is open now ahead of deliveries beginning in early 2018.

Vauxhall Viva Rocks

It also gets OnStar and an optional R 4.0 IntelliLink infotainment system that links up to smartphones via Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. “Making it among the best connected A-segment cars on the market,” reckons Vauxhall.

What will it be used for? It’s perfect for country lanes and city potholes, believes the firm, and is thus even more ideally suited to the city than the regular Viva. It doesn’t even bother with hill descent control or other SUV driving aids, preferring instead to offer a ‘city’ button that makes the steering fingertip light.

Just don’t expect to win any traffic light grands prix: the 1.0-litre engine has, at 75hp, no more power, so still drifts from 0-62mph in 13.1 seconds. Tough luck for the tough-look Viva Rocks if you want to get ahead of the rest…

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Richard Aucock
Richard Aucockhttps://www.richardaucock.co.uk/
Richard is director at Motoring Research. He has been with us since 2001, and has been a motoring journalist even longer. He won the IMCO Motoring Writer of the Future Award in 1996 and the acclaimed Sir William Lyons Award in 1998. Both awards are run by the Guild of Motoring Writers and Richard is currently vice chair of the world's largest organisation for automotive media professionals. Richard is also a juror and Steering Committee director for World Car Awards and the UK juror for the AUTOBEST awards.

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