From certain angles, and if you're in the right mood, the Suzuki Swift can resemble a Mini. It's got that same mix of cute and cocksure about it, and, with its outsize wing-mirrors and nubby aerial, it gives a similar impression that it is trying so hard to be loveable that it is in danger of rupturing its water tank and bursting its doors off. From somewhere under the bonnet, its little voice is piping: "Play with me!" It wouldn't be unduly surprising to find its bonnet was wet, like a puppy's nose.

Here's the hook, though: even in its new, perked-up, freshly Europeanised version, the Swift is outrageously, thigh-slappingly cheap. Indeed, at £7,499, an entry-level Swift can be had for little more than the price of a Mini's door handles. (A Mini One starts at £10,500, and goes up very quickly.) Even by the bracingly high standards of cut-price Japanese motoring, this is an exercise in nerveless economising.

Hats off to any manufacturers who lower the full price of a car to the point where it appears to be a down payment on one of its rivals. If I was in a showroom and a salesman was flashing these prices under my nose, I would be inclined to wonder whether tyres and an engine were included, or whether you had to buy those later under the terms of some punitive monthly plan.

Not that this is even the cheapest car in the Suzuki range. That honour goes to the Alto, which is tinier, even, than the Swift, and perfectly good fun, as long as you don't mind driving with the steering wheel in your face and one of your legs hanging out of the window.

The Swift, by contrast, has seat belts for five and relatively comfortable space for four. It's also (hence the name) prodigiously quick, and wildly light to the touch, especially in the range-topping 1.5 version that I tried.

Placing a 1.5 litre engine on a car of this scale is an act of almost comical over-provision, akin to putting an outboard motor on a Sellotape dispenser. The car seemed to have two basic modes: either stationary or fast. (My suspicion is that the 1.3 litre engine may provide something in between.)

As such, it was bound to induce one or two safety anxieties. That's no slur on the Swift specifically. It's simply a comment on the fear that attaches to going out on the road in any car that is roughly the size and weight of a beach ball. The Swift could be the most carefully assembled vehicle in the world, bolted together by a team of moonlighting Volvo workers working in collaboration with leading neurosurgeons from around the globe, and it would still be possible to feel as nervous about it as one would feel about driving a tin of Celebrations that has had a re-spray.

With a small car whose price doesn't make it through to five figures, the suspicion is bound to linger that it will afford its occupants little more protection than a bike would. To put it another way, at the back of one's mind is the dark thought that a collision with, for instance, a squirrel could have serious implications for the car's bodywork. And squirrels never seem to have insurance. (Say what you like about the Mini, it is built by BMW. It can handle a squirrel.)

The only real way to rule out these anxieties definitively in relation to the Swift would have been to slam the car into a wall or an oncoming Range Rover and then carefully write down in a notebook exactly how much was left of it. But, as we often have cause to lament on this page, the practice of crash-testing is largely frowned upon in motoring journalism circles. One is left, instead, to subject the car to the two journalistic tests that meet broadly with car- industry approval, namely: knocking on the bodywork with a knuckle; and shutting the doors to see whether they go "poink" (bad sign) or "chonk" (good sign).

Under the terms of this refined scrutiny, the doors of the Swift were revealed to yield neither a "poink" nor a "chonk", but a much more enigmatic, mid-range sound - kind of a "choink". Though not exactly motorway-ready, this was felt to be averagely reassuring, certainly squirrel-proof and definitely way better than "pink" or "plish", which generally indicate that a car is suitable only for the lighter kinds of work, such as a newspaper round.

But the true miracle of the Swift is the amount of equipment it provides for your lack of money: electric windows, a CD player, understated but solid dashboard furniture and rugged fabric on the seats - these things one could just about expect. But including in the bargain a keyless locking and starting system, as available in various Renaults, is just showing off. Buy one. Heck, at these prices, buy two and give one away.