SE Connect trim’s 15in wheels and relatively meagre tyres can be replaced by bigger ones if you insist, but I strongly suspect some of the car’s surprising ride suppleness, even refinement, would be lost.

As for gadgets, this base model has four electric windows, a decent audio system with wired smartphone mirroring, good head lights and everything else important. I honestly lacked for nothing. The black fabric seats are comfortable and stylish.

For those prepared to leave their buying comfort zones, the i10 is less a cheap car, more a fresh and beguiling ownership experience.

Steve Cropley

Hyundai i10 1.0 MPi SE Connect

Price £14,995 (March 2023, pre-facelift) Engine 3 cyls in line, 998cc, petrol Power 66bhp at 5500rpm Torque 71lb ft at 3750rpm Gearbox 5-spd manual, FWD Kerb weight 921kg 0-62mph 14.8sec Top speed 97mph Economy 56.5mpg CO2, tax band 119g/km, 28% Insurance group 4

Citroën C3

When Citroën took the diminutive C1 city car off sale last year, it had become a £14,000 buy itself. The French company’s solution to replacing it – to providing the best value for money that it could in the modern compact hatchback class – was the C3 You.

It is, in essence, a C3 for less than C1 money. When it was launched in April 2022 at an eye-catching £12,995, it represented an effective 20% price slash for the entry-level C3.

Some of that “price realignment ” was the upshot of a fair pricing policy through which, a bit like Dacia, Citroën has lately sought to cut discounting and advertise its cars at a lower list price much closer to the one that the customer actually pays. But much of it was simply about focusing the car ’s spec down on the essentials.

By that term, however, Citroën clearly means something a little different than the bare bones. On the canvas of its bold exterior styling, the C3 You paints body-coloured bumpers and door handles, bright white door-mirror caps and contrasting C-pillar styling, and it can even be had with a white roof. So it doesn’t look like a bargain-bucket buy.