Motoring: Value for money

The concept of cheap and cheerful appeals for the obvious reasons: the prospect of something-for-(nearly)-nothing; the assumption that it does exactly what it says on the tin; the lack of pretentiousness — suggesting that its owner is also virtuously free of that forgivable vice — and the freedom from burdensome excess. However, the assumption that cheap and cheerful go naturally together is about as accurate as the identification of poverty with virtue: occasionally yes, often no.

It’s different with cars — at least, it is now. Hitherto cheap cars were often shoddily assembled from poor materials by workers who didn’t care and managers who failed to manage all but their pension funds. They were rusting before they left the factory. But I’m not sure there is a bad car now; there are varying degrees of competence, achievement and durability, of course, yet even the cheapest, such as the £6,995 Citroën C1 or the £7,795 Kia Picanto (with seven-year warranty), will dependably do 90 per cent of what your quarter-million Rolls-Royce Phantom will do (with no seven-year warranty).