Skoda: roomy and affordable

Those in search of a beautifully conceived, affordable and impressively space and fuel-efficient urban runabout will need to consider it. The styling looks quite smart but forget the aesthetics: two statistics sum up the real thinking behind this design. A length of around 3.5-metres yet a wheelbase that takes up nearly 2.5-metres of that. Which is why, though a Citigo is no longer than a Fiat 500, it offers far more room inside, space in fact for the four fully-sized adults who could never comfortably fit in the apparently space-efficient Italian car.

On the move, without a turbocharger to boost torque, this car’s 1.0-litre three cylinder petrol unit needs to be revved quite a bit, peak power not arriving until 6,000rpm, only 600rpm shy of the red line. That’s true of both 60 and 75PS variants.

Most will be content with the base version, capable as it is of sixty in 14.4s on the way to 99mph, quite enough to keep up with the traffic. The performance gains offered by the 75PS variant seem relatively slight (0-60mph in 13.2s on the way to 107mph) but the unit is a little more refined.

This Skoda simply has to be super-affordable to run. It is. Thanks in part to a low kerb weight of only around 850kg, even the least efficient entry-level 60PS models will return a combined fuel economy figure of 62.8mpg, with emissions pegged at 108g/km.