KIA PICANTO

As rivals fall by the wayside, Kia's popular city car gets a makeover

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The supermini before you will, we suspect, turn out to be the slowest car this magazine tests all year, notwithstanding the subject of Matt Prior's Christmas road test. Then again, based on previous candidates, that machine could well possess not a chassis but a hull.

But forget about performance, because the 3.6m-long Kia Picanto is still one of the more unusual and interesting cars we'll test in 2024 more unusual as a type of car than even plug-in hybrid supercars, which now outnumber truly small hatchbacks. It will be news to nobody that city cars are an endangered species. Low margins, the cost of advanced safety features and a shift in market demands have all played a part in the thinning out of their ranks, yet diminutive, highly affordable, economical cars still have a role to play - and rather a noble one, if you ask us. That's what this £15k Kia offers: easily accessible, trusty motoring. And perhaps a little fun? Let's find out.

DESIGN & ENGINEERING

PROS Usefully narrow; weighs less than 900kg on our scales

CONS The turbo 1.0-litre unit has been retired; chassis carried over

This Picanto looks fresh, what with its hammerhead-style headlights, which ape those of the monolithic new EV9 SUV, Kia's largest model. However, underneath the tweaked exterior sits the same platform that arrived in 2018. The JA generation of Picanto is thus fundamentally unchanged, with MacPherson struts ahead of a torsion beam. This means it remains remarkably narrow, easily slipping through gaps that even a Volkswagen Up would need to slow for.