Vauxhall Mokka Gse Review: Back To Vxr Glory Days?

The return of a true fast Vauxhall sub-brand – on an electric compact crossover With its beefy stance and punchy electric performance, the new Vauxhall Mokka GSE looks like a refreshingly old school arrival in hot hatch-loving Britain.All right, it’s more crossover than hatchback, but there are genuinely lots of ‘hot variant’ things to say about this GSE.Standing for Grand Sport Electric, this is an initialism that Opel has used before and is a mash-up of the old GSi and GTE badges previously applied to hot Vauxhalls.And GSE is very much going to be a true performance sub-brand, they say, like VXR, GSi, GTE and others before it (Vauxhall has had a few).There is an Astra GSE already, but that’s basically a trim level. This is a performance statement, and it feels perfectly crafted for Britain.The reason is simple. Like the many hot hatches to have topped UK charts in years gone by, the Mokka GSE is a 277bhp performance version of an affordable small (ish) car, the Mokka Electric. While it’s obviously no Corsa VXR, in today’s world it is relatively compact, at 4.15m long.It's priced at £35,495 (including the UK government's Electric Car Grant), which makes it £7000 cheaper than the Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica Veloce with which it shares many underlying parts, and it even undercuts its sister from another mister, the Abarth 600e, by £2500.That makes Vauxhall’s take on this 277bhp Stellantis Group base the most affordable of the bunch - and therefore very much in keeping with the brand's sporting past.