So I'm driving along one evening, somewhere south of London, in my new, top-of-the-range, dark-red Fiat Stilo, and trying to make up my mind whether to pronounce it Steelo or Stylo, when suddenly I realise that I fancy a pizza.

What to do? Turn on to the nearest high street and drive up and down? You're kidding. What do you take me for? Some kind of retro freak? Some kind of saddo with an old-technology fixation? No, what I do is smile quietly to myself and saucily arch my right eyebrow. Then I lean over to the Fiat Auto Connect system, with its 7in colour screen mounted in the central console, and press the green "Information" button.

At this point, my Stilo invisibly and inaudibly sends a message to a call centre, located I know not where, but probably in Gateshead, because that's where most of those places are. And within a minute, the hands-free phone rings and a woman with a kindly and reassuring voice is asking me what it is that I desire. "Pizza," I say. "With extra anchovies."

The woman hangs up and goes about her researches. In less than three minutes, my Connect system bongs to indicate that I've got mail. And there on the screen is the name, address and phone number of the Italian restaurant that is nearest to my satellite-tracked coordinates.

So then what do I do? Stop and ask someone how to get there? Don't be silly. I drop the message on to the Navigator system and let the computerised voice map the shortest route and lead me right to the door - having phoned ahead, obviously, to check the availability of anchovies.

This is the future of the car as envisaged by the Stilo's designers: not just a vehicle for travel from one place to another, but a kind of mobile information station for the hassled, the hungry, and the plain confused. People who don't care for pizza will be glad to know that the system can locate more than just Italian restaurants. It can message you with hotel details, traffic news, flight information or the position of the nearest cashpoint.

And if the car ever catches fire, you can hit the SOS button and be put through to the emergency services. (Of course, generally speaking, calls to a fire station are best made from outside the burning vehicle, if at all possible.)

In truth, this kind of driver-pampering has been available for a while now in high-end executive saloons. But Fiat is the first to offer it in a mass-market hatchback, to remove it from the walnut fascia and poke it into a hole in the traditional matt plastic. The Stilo is designed to compete with such cars as the Vauxhall Astra, the Ford Focus and the Honda Civic, none of which, one must admit, can match it in offering a push-button, email-based pizza-ordering service.

Replacing the Bravo and Brava, which had their days of glory but now look about as young and thrusting as the Austin Allegro, the Stilo is keen to play the techno card all round. You can get it with a Selespeed gearbox - one of those automatic affairs that you can override manually, and clutchlessly, by tapping the gearstick backwards and forwards. Kind of fun, if you don't mind banging your forehead on the windscreen every time you change gear.

And there's more. Turn the key and, while the car indulges in an electronic version of patting its pockets and checking that it's got everything with it, the com puter screen shows a little cartoon in which a magnifying glass passes over a line drawing of the chassis. In the case of the car I drove, the computer immediately announced a "Rain Sensor Failure" and a "Darkness Sensor Failure" and instructed me to "return the car to dealer".

It's unfair to judge an entire production line on the malfunctions of one model, but it's easy to imagine life with a Stilo involving a lot of nagging little breakdowns like this, with the car battling against its own fiddly electronics and the driver eventually suffering a Sensor Humour Failure.

It's potentially infuriating, too, the way the new digital technology actively works to delay things that have always happened instantaneously in conventional, analogue cars. You have to wait for the Stilo to boot up before the radio comes on. When you switch off the headlights, there's a disconcerting little pause before they go dark.

And though the car is primed with all manner of alarms and whistles of doubtful necessity - to let you know you've just selected reverse, that you've taken the key out, or that you're close to something behind you - the ticking of the indicators, which can actually be handy to hear, is virtually inaudible.

Strangely, the forward thinking ceased when it came to the design. Externally, the Stilo, even in the ritzier three-door version, looks like an old-generation VW Golf. It drives like one, too, solidly and dependably (electronics allowing). You'll never want for pizzas and fog updates. But a little Italian spirit wouldn't have hurt.