Skoda Roomster
Price £14,710
Top speed 106mph
Acceleration 0-62 in 13 seconds
Consumption 40.9mpg
Eco rating 7/10
At the wheel Noddy
Top gadget iPod adapter
In a word Roomy

Combining the sweet simplicity of a child's drawing of an ambulance with all the native élan of a transporter for show dogs, the new Skoda Roomster appears to be pitching for space in that group of lovably eccentric family cars whose shining example is the Fiat Multipla (chief design inspiration: a pond ornament).

But isn't it a bit early for Skoda to be attempting humour? Only in the past decade, since its adoption by VW, has it been possible to mention the legendary former Czechoslovakian car outlet in general conversation without sniggering and attempting a gag about motorised waste skips. People at Skoda know only too intimately what it is like to be the butt of every car joke going, and you could hardly have blamed them if they had spent a few more years quietly putting out new Octavias and Fabias and contentedly living as proof that there is life after both communism and satire.

Alternatively, this heart-warmingly mad car is the ultimate proof of Skoda's new self-certainty, an operational confidence witnessed in the very name "Roomster", which is as arch a 50s jive-talk reference as you are likely to see emblazoned across the boot of a five-seat multi-purpose vehicle in 2006.

Moreover, with the Roomster, Skoda seem to be proposing nothing less than a revolution in the way we think about a car's interior. Hitherto, you or I may have found ourselves referring unthinkingly to the "front" and "back" of our cars - as in, "Hop in the front, I'll give you a lift", or "Come on, kids - in the back".

Here, though, in possibly the boldest piece of rebranding you will come across outside the one that reinvented Skoda, the front of the car becomes the "Driving Room" and the back is designated the "Living Room". The idea being that, while the Roomster's Driving Room contains the things you need for driving (a seat, some pedals, a steering wheel, a cup holder), the Living Room is fitted with the things you need for living (another seat, big windows, another cup holder).

So many questions tremble thrillingly in the air at this point. If a Driving Room and a Living Room are now possible, can a fully operational Little Room be far behind? Also, who will be the first middle-class family to knock through between their Roomster's Living Room and its Driving Room? ("We just wanted to create a big downstairs space in which the whole family could be together.")

This decision to think about the car as two separate zones, with separate needs, at least explains why the Roomster looks like two different cars that have backed into each other at high speed and fused. Form appears to have taken on function and, after a bloody scrap, lost by two falls and a submission.

But that's OK. The car is smooth enough, comfortable enough, cheap enough and, most important of all in the circumstances, it's full of convertible space. Indeed, with the optional, floor-mounted bracing system, you can rig the back of the car to rack up two bicycles. Hey presto - your Living Room is a bike shed. Now, that's jive.