The tiny Toyota Yaris was European Car of the Year in 2000 and would even now be hard to shove aside in another category - the Dinkiest Among Dinkies. Back in an all-new sporty format, the Yaris cheerfully embraces many of the design aspects of the toy delivery van - particularly in its snubbed front end and its Tonka-style bumpers. Once you get over the way that its name sounds unpromisingly like Cockney slang for the backside ("I gave it a good kick up the Yaris"), this car is as cute as a fluffy pencil case.
Cute and small. It makes a basic hatchback look almost wantonly space-consuming and vulgar. In Paris, where parking is done with a professional elan that British urban parkers can only be in awe of, the Yaris is the sort of car you might see wedged backwards into a gap, its bumper parallel with the kerb.
Still, these days, a car that craves a reputation for city-friendly titchiness has really got to work for it. Both the jocularly tiny Smart and the Mercedes A class have opened up the market for all-weather golf carts and if your prime requirement from a car is the ability to be able to park it in a pothole, the Smart in particular (roughly half the price and almost half the size) would serve you more fulsomely than the Yaris.
The difference is that the Yaris - for all its dinkydom and its readiness to continue down the kind of narrow urban roads where even cyclists might think about dismounting - is properly a four-seater car, and not just a four-seater in a merely cosmetic or wishful sense. Most of us will, at some time or other, have been obliged to force ourselves into the back of an alleged four-seater in which the rear cabin is actually little more than an upholstered parcel-shelf, on which there is only room to sit comfortably if you happen to be a nodding dog or an expert in tantric yoga.
From the outside, the Yaris seems set to offer passengers this kind of experience in spades. You know, from the width of the doors, that the driver and his cohort are going to be OK. But what about the people in the back, behind those tiny porthole windows? Aren't they going to be needing oxygen, or even a saline solution, by the time they've finished in there? And how are they going to get into the car in the first place? From the pavement, you may fancy your best chance is by going in head-first via the boot, punching out the seat-backs and clambering through the gap.
But no. Thanks to a spatial illusion unrivalled since the Tardis, the front seats of the Yaris tip enough to allow fairly dignified passage to the back, where one can sit upright and uncrushed in a cabin that is startlingly roomy and, thanks to the sunroof, perfectly airy. One can even avail oneself of the facilities: a moulded drinks holder and an overhead light. That doesn't sound like a lot, but bear in mind that in many rival city cars you wouldn't be looking for somewhere to rest your grande latte; you'd be sitting with cramp in your neck and your knees in your ears.
The traditional drawback with city cars is pace. In something like a Seat Arosa, in order to get to speeds above 40mph you need to apply in writing to the accelerator several days in advance. Hence the new T Sport version of the Yaris. T Sport is the brand name for Toyota's new soup-up routine; other models in the Toyota range are soon to be given the T Sport treatment. In the case of the Yaris, the makeover has involved stiffening the suspension and the steering, for that special Mika Hakkinen feeling, and equipping the car with a 1.5 litre engine, which doesn't sound astonishingly powerful, but is more than capable of moving something that is roughly the size and weight of a cardboard box.
As a result, the new Yaris can be made to whip around the place and achieve speed as and when needed. That said, you will have to put up with the noise of the engine, which may not be one of the most refined sounds in modern motoring. Other connoisseurs may differ, but I was getting washing machine, with some persistent top notes of lawnmower.
Should city cars be aiming to go small anyway? Arguably, the curse of modern urban driving isn't the absence of parking space so much as the proliferation of speed bumps. In which case, what you need isn't a tiny car but a tank. Needless to say, hitting a speed bump in the Yaris felt like being tossed into an empty skip.
Other reservations: the dashboard is a grim tundra of slick plastic; the dials are in the middle of the dash, located in their own elliptical bay and angled exclusively towards the driver - depriving passengers of the fun of complaining about how fast you are going. And turning to look over my shoulder during conventional reversing manoeuvres, I kept squishing my nose on the headrest. But at least the people in the back were comfy.
The lowdown
Toyota Yaris T Sport
Price: £11,995
Top speed: 118 mph
Acceleration: 0-62 in 9 seconds
Consumption: 40.9 mpg (combined)
At the wheel: Kylie Minogue
On the stereo: Little Feat
En route for: Littlehampton
