Vauxhall Adam (2013 – 2019) Review

If you’re more open on your choice of stylish city car, the Adam may be on your list, but there are lots of better options. The MINI Hatch, Audi A1 and Volkswagen Up are much more fun to drive, more practical and better on quality, while the Hyundai i10 and Kia Picanto are cheaper and come with longer warranties.

You remember that period in history a few years back, when pretty much every third car you saw was a MINI or a Fiat 500?

Would’ve been about 2008, 2009, something like that. Such was the popularity of these cars that our streets were absolutely littered with them. And although both were funky, retro-styled city cars that traded mainly on their looks and their ability to be customised to their buyer’s own personal taste with a variety of affordable styling options, each took a rather different approach to the formula.

The Fiat was the car that provided buyers with bags of style for a very modest outlay, while the Mini was much more expensive, but also much more aspirational, meaning it was no less popular.

Unsurprisingly, the success of these cars didn’t go unnoticed by other car companies, and one of those was Vauxhall. A bright idea was quickly cooked up. “What if we were to take a chopped down Corsa platform, stick a sexily-styled body on top of it, offer buyers even more customisation options and then set the price slap-bang in the middle of those of the Fiat and the Mini?”, they thought. Probably.

And thus, a little while later, the Adam was released. Being all-new, it didn’t have the decades of heritage to call upon that its rivals did, and as such, its styling was much more modern than it was retro, but stylish it still was.

But sadly, the Adam wasn’t the goldmine that Vauxhall had hoped for. Maybe it was the fact it wasn’t retro enough. Maybe it was neither cheap enough, nor aspirational enough, to appeal? Maybe it was the daft name. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that in a number of key areas, the Adam simply wasn’t all that good.

Let’s start with its biggest achilles heel: practicality. Yes, both the 500 and the Mini were also very tight inside and short on boot space, but compared with the Adam, both felt like a luxury limo inside. Yes, buyers would willingly sacrifice a certain amount of practicality at the altar of style, but there were evidently limits.

And yes, neither the 500 or the MINI were particularly well equipped, either, but neither was the Vauxhall, and that would have been an easy thing to make its USP. Fairly crucially, the Adam was also very mediocre to drive.

The ride was lumpy and unsettled, the handling was bland and uninspiring, while the engines were flat and performance was gutless. Yes the same was true of the 500, but it was cheap enough to not matter. And while the MINI wasn’t the comfiest car on the planet, it delivered thrill-a-minute handling and perky performance to make up for it.

It wasn’t all bad. The interior was pretty good ergonomically, and interior quality was also very impressive.

However, that’s just not enough with such popular competition. These days, used examples can be picked up for a song, and if you fancy something stylish and rare and you don’t really need back seats, then it might be worth a look. However, make sure you try before you buy to make sure you can put up with its foibles.

The Adam is the poorest car in the class on this score. Front space is only adequate, and tall adults might even struggle for room here, but they’ll have absolutely no chance in the back.

There’s so little headroom and legroom in the two rear seats that even small passengers will be uncomfortable, and things aren’t helped by the fact that the front seats have such a chunky design. They don’t help when you're trying to clamber in or out of the rear seats, either.

In fact, space in the back is so tight that it’s best to view the rear chairs as little more than a shelf upon which to put extra baggage. You might need it, too, because the miniscule 170-litre boot is even smaller than you get in a MINI.

There’s a huge load lip that you’ll need to muscle heavy items over, and an annoying parcel shelf that you have to put down manually every time you close the boot. The back seats are split 50/50 so you can fold them down in two parts, but they don’t lie flat and there’s a big step in the extended load floor.

Most of the materials look and feel impressively high-grade, and various glossy trim panels, chrome edgings and brightly-coloured inserts keep things looking interesting.

Most of the switches and dials work with well-damped precision, too, which also helps boost the feeling of quality. You will find some harder, scratchier plastics lower down in the cabin, but that’s normal in a city car, and they still feel more solid and substantial than those in a 500 or DS3. All in all, then, the Adam feels like a reasonably posh environment.

Most versions come with a basic stereo that brings together Bluetooth, FM/AM radio, a CD player and USB and aux-in sockets.

Stepping up from Jam trim to Glam ups the speaker count from four to six, while Slam trim adds a wifi hotspot, but the basic system is still the same. To be honest, though, we’ve never encountered this system. because all the Adams we’ve driven have been fitted with an optional system instead. So, we can’t really tell you with any confidence how easy the basic system is to use.

The optional system (standard on the Energised trims) adds a 7.0-inch touchscreen with Apple Carplay/Android Auto, so you can use some of your phone’s apps - including navigation functionality - through the car’s screen, but there’s still no built-in sat-nav. It’s reasonably straightforward to use, although the screen could be more sensitive and the reactions could be quicker.

Like with most cars, prices changed throughout the Adam’s life, but it was never cheap. Even the entry level car, the Jam 1.2, would’ve set you back around £13,500, while at the top of the range, prices rocketed to a frankly ludicrous £20,000 for the Rocks S.

Prices for the best engine in the range - the 1.0-litre turbo - began at around £17,500 because Slam was the lowest trim with which it was available, so most buyers will probably be better off sticking with a 1.2 or 1.4 in Jam or Glam trim. A

t least the car has been around long enough that prices have had plenty of time to come down. You’ll find lots of entry-level cars for around the £5000 mark, along with one or two older, higher-spec cars at similar money.

The 1.4 with the Easytronic transmission came next with 56mpg, then it was the 1.2 on 51mpg. Both versions of the 1.4 stopped just short of the 50mpg mark, while the 1.4 turbo in the S returned 45mpg.

Like we said, though, these are old-style NEDC figures that have since been replaced by a new WLTP testing system that’s designed to better reflect real-world driving, so you’re even less likely to meet these figures than you are WLTP ones.

Insurance groupings for the Adam started at group two for the weediest 1.2s, and rose to 15 for the most powerful 1.4 turbos in the S models, but most of the rest of the range was closer to the bottom of that scale then the top. The Adam should be very affordable to insure, then, but to be fair, on a car that’s so short on power, you’d expect nothing else.

Vauxhall does an entirely reasonable job for reliability according to most of the various reliability studies doing the rounds. The Warranty Direct Reliability Index ranks the brand mid-table, while it sits in the top six in the 2019 JD Power Vehicle Dependability Survey.

However, the firm low-speed ride is less successful, fidgeting and jiggling over ripples and ruts, and really crashing when faced with a bigger, sharper-edged pothole. And that’s on the standard suspension and 16-inch alloys of the base-level Jam version.

Things get lumpier on the bigger wheels that other versions have, and on cars fitted with sports suspension (Standard on Glam, Energised, S, and Rocks S trims), life is even less comfortable.

Ironically, things to improve once you break out of town and you’re able to go faster, but the ride still isn’t great. Even a MINI or a DS3, both of which are rather firm, feel cosseting next to the Adam.

In corners, the Adam does a decent job of controlling its body movements, and there’s a decent level of grip, but the light steering that was so handy in town remains so when you’re going quicker, and that doesn’t instill you with confidence in the bends. When rivals like the MINI and the A1 are so involving to drive, the Adam is miles behind.

All the engines on offer are petrol-powered, and the range kicks off with a 70PS 1.2. It’s okay for tottering around town, but anywhere else, it feels desperately slow. If motorways are a regular occurrence for you you’ll want to upgrade to one of the 1.4s.

There are two, one with 87PS and one with 100PS. We haven’t tried the former, but the latter is a bit more relaxed when picking up the pace, and a bit more comfortable sitting at motorway speed, but it’s still not very quick.

For us, the best engine available is the three-cylinder turbocharged 1.0-litre unit giving 115PS. It has much more low-end pull than the naturally aspirated engines, making it feel a lot more punchy, so not only is it a good bit quicker, it also makes your progress considerably easier. The other turbocharged engine is the 1.4 is the S and Rocks S that delivers 150PS.

Yes, it feels a bit quicker than the 1.0-litre, but not by as much as you might expect given its output.

With the Adam dating back to 2012, it’s no real surprise that the latest driver assistance systems - things like automatic emergency braking, blind spot monitoring and lane departure warning - aren’t offered.

All the legal requirements are covered, including electronic traction and stability aids, tyre pressure monitoring, daytime running lights, while six airbags and some Isofix child seat mounting points are also provided. You don’t get much on top of the necessities, though.

The Adam scored a rather disappointing four (out of five) stars in Euro NCAP crash tests. That was back in 2013, too, and since the tests get harder and harder year on year, it might well do worse if it were tested today.

Prepare to be confused. Vauxhall chopped and changed the model range almost constantly throughout the Adam’s life, and also regularly offered bizarrely named special editions.

What’s more, because the Adam is all about customisation, there were loads of option packs and individual options for new car buyers to choose from, so on the used market, it’s likely that you’ll never see two cars the same.

It’d take all day to namecheck every one of the various trim levels offered, but we’ll take you through the highlights.

Three trim levels formed the backbone of the range, and these were called Jam, Glam and Slam. Jam gave you manual air-con, alloy wheels, cruise control, electric front windows, a leather steering wheel, electric door mirrors and remote locking, while Glam added single-zone climate control, a panoramic roof and some extra bit of external chrome detailing.

Slam earned you bigger alloys, privacy glass and a contrasting roof colour, along with sports suspension. Then came the S, which had the most powerful engine, but also came with a sporty bodykit, uprated brakes and even bigger alloys.

The Rocks Air version has more 4x4-style looks with plastic wheelarch covers, chunkier bumpers and a raised ride height, and it also added a retractable fabric sunroof, while the Rocks S took the SUV styling of the Rocks and the sporty styling of the S, and lumped it all together in one strange-looking mish-mash.

There were also the Energised and Energised Blackjack models, which both came with the upgraded infotainment system we talked about earlier, and some body-coloured interior panels and some fancy paint choices, but were otherwise pretty similar to low-spec Jam cars. See? Told you it was confusing...