|
|
The Market
In an age of niche marketing, it's rather refreshing to come across a class of car that should appeal to almost everybody. Apparently, 80% of British motorists travel just 20 miles each day to and from work and of those, 80% work in urban areas. These are the people targeted by the City car, a smaller spin on the standard Supermini concept, aimed at those who think that very small is very beautiful.The Japanese tried – and failed – to launch this class of car in Europe in the early Nineties, having been forced into the production of such models by their own overcrowded roads. British buyers were having none of it: apart from burning their fingers with the odd Fiat Panda, just about the only thing they were prepared to consider that was smaller than a Supermini was Rover’s ubiquitous Mini – and that was seen as pretty eccentric. Only with the launch of Fiat’s Polish-built Cinquecento in 1993 did attitudes begin to change and sales rise to the kind of numbers that industry analysts had predicted years before. When Ford’s Ka arrived in 1996 followed shortly afterwards by the SEAT Arosa and VW Lupo twins, customers at last had the kind of choice they had been craving, particularly as the Far Eastern makers had tried again and were pumping more Europeanised City cars into Europe as fast as they could make them. Since it took the City car sector so long to get properly started, it’s only now that the used buyer can, for the first time, enjoy a really wide choice of alternatives. Cars like these weren’t much cheaper than their larger Supermini stablemates when they were new, so don’t expect it to be any different on the used market. You can however, expect to add the benefit of a slightly smaller price tag to savings on fuel, insurance and servicing costs. Throw in easier manoeuvrability and ‘chuckably’ fun handling and the appeal becomes easy to see. Those manufacturers denied a proper City car for the UK market by their design departments (like Renault, Nissan, Toyota, Citroen and Peugeot) often chose to market stripped-out, entry-level Superminis in this sector. If a larger car is what you want, then fine, but don’t expect to enjoy all of the City car virtues we mentioned earlier.
Where the conventional Supermini does hold an advantage is in its (usually) greater suitability for longer journeys. Of the current crop of City cars, only the Ford Ka, VW Lupo and SEAT Arosa could, at a pinch, feasibly attempt a lengthier trip without causing too much discomfort. It’s unfortunate then, that all of these only have three doors. Almost everything else in the sector is really designed for shorter hops. |
||||||
