It’s nice to drive too: quiet, smooth, not quick but sufficiently perky and nimble enough to navigate the multi-storey at Westfield, if a touch unnervingly unstable with it. And slow.
Most of all, it’s got universal kerb appeal and a sense of humour – attributes you’d be hard-pressed to attach to the likes of the Dacia Spring and Leapmotor T03. You smile while you drive it, and the whole world smiles with you – kids at bus stops, lorry drivers, tourists and haggard commuters united in their visible appreciation of a car that seeks to delight as much as convey.
I don’t want to disingenuously paint it as the very saviour of global automotive, of course. This is still very much a fashion-first and relatively rudimentary runaround – only really superior to a moped by virtue of its roof and seatbelts – and you can bet you won’t see many of them, but if the mainstream marques were to approach the thorny subject of urban mobility with such irreverence, the collective disillusionment towards modern motoring might just subside.
Sure, for the best part of £20,000 you could take your pick from any number of roomier petrol hatchbacks, and there’s even a growing number of ‘full-sized’ electric cars available for not much more money. Not to mention the dazzling array of bigger, brainier and all-round better alternatives you could pick up second-hand, but do you lift the whole front end off to get in them? Could you park them end on in a bay space? Could you take the entire sound system with you – in one hand – when you get out of the car?
