I once owned a Cinquecento. There, I said it. I should also confess to actually being rather fond of it.

Sure, I’d have to change down a gear or two at the merest hint of a hill and there was barely enough room to swing a gerbil, but it was hard not to like the little fella. I always felt he gave 100 per cent no matter what challenges he faced.

Sadly he was killed by a much bigger Mitsubishi Lancer. It wasn’t a particularly fair contest and it certainly encouraged me to replace the Cinquecento with a larger car so that if there was a next time, I’d be ready.

However, as the cost of ownership rises, the appeal of small cars with frugal engines rises with it. Last week I spent some time with Volkswagen’s ‘city car’, the up!. For the sake of simplicity and good grammar I’ll be referring to the up! as the Up from now on.

It’s a nice clean design that more or less follows the lead of rivals from Toyota and Citroen. Large headlights and a colour-coded bumper insert provide the Up with an essentially cute front end while the flat rear helps maximise interior space as well as making reversing easier.

It’s available in three and five-door models - the three-door marginally better-looking but inevitably the less practical of the two - but the dimensions remain the same whichever version you choose.

It’s possible to liberate plenty of space for front-seat occupants but, of course, passengers in the back will suffer as a consequence. Compromises will have to be made if you’re contemplating carrying a couple of fully-grown human beings in the rear, particularly on longer journeys.

The cabin is far from adventurous, VW preferring instead to explore the bounds of practicality. That’s obviously no bad thing because as a result almost all the switches, knobs, dials and buttons - admittedly there aren’t really that many - are within reach and the instruments are clear and easy to read.

The one exception to that is the passenger-side window which is operated with a switch on the, you guessed it, passenger side. There is no switch on the driver’s side. It’s an odd cost-saving exercise and its effectiveness is certainly compromised by having to carry a passenger just to open the opposite window!

My Move Up - from a range that includes the Take, High and Rock Ups - was equipped with the Maps & More sat nav mounted atop the dashboard. It also provides connectivity (via bluetooth) for your mobile phone and a visual display for the parking sensors. No, I don’t know why anyone would need parking sensors on a car this size either.

Despite the back-to-basics feel there are still flashes of VW’s renowned build quality and the upmarket ambience is further enhanced by the excellent sound suppression, which is impressive by any standards, but especially so in a car of this size.

Given the car’s diminutive dimensions I wasn’t too optimistic about the size of the boot so it was a pleasant surprise to discover that, unlike my late Cinquecento there is room for more than two loaves of bread and a quart of milk. The boot is, in fact, the biggest in this class at a not-too-shabby 250-litres. There’s even a spare wheel thrown - not literally - in there.

With just 59bhp to propel it, performance was never going to be spine-tingling and so it turned out, but this is a car that’s happiest in an urban environment and, let loose on the streets it calls home it comes alive. The three-cylinder engine needs plenty of revs to get the car under way, but around town it feels nimble, eager and responsive. Gear changes were smooth and accurate, although the positioning of reverse on the gear lever means that selecting it by mistake is not beyond the realms of possibility.

It’s not quite the proverbial fish out of water on the motorway and, in fact, is quite happy cruising along at 70mph - my test car was even fitted with cruise control - but if you’re planning to overtake it’s probably best to plan well ahead. In-gear acceleration is there, somewhere, but it’s not something you want to be constantly searching for on a lengthy drive.

The Up did have one more surprise in store for me, however. There’s a hill that I have to tackle on my way to work and it gave my Cinquecento, and me, nightmares, forcing me to drop down a couple of gears in a vain attempt to maintain forward momentum. I was anticipating a similar scenario in the Up but no, it gamely hung on to 70mph right to the summit. It was a splendid effort.

There’s a smattering of youthful exuberance about the Up when you get behind the wheel that isn’t necessarily apparent from the outside. It lacks the cache of, say, the Fiat 500, and the visual excitement of the Adam and C1/108/Aygo but once you’re on the move it’s not difficult to have fun.

Where the Up does leave most of its rivals trailing is its build quality and refinement, and lets not forget the astonishingly large and practical boot.

VW have a clear understanding of what their customers want and the Up doesn’t stray too far from that path. A little more flourish wouldn’t have gone amiss but a lack of flair doesn’t bring the Up down, it just pegs it back a little.

Move up! 1.0-litre BlueMotion Technology

PRICE: £10,235

AS TESTED: £11,310

ENGINE: 1.0-litre, 3-cylinder

POWER: 59bhp

TRANSMISSION: 5-speed manual

ACCELERATION(0-62mph): 14.4sec

TOP SPEED: 100mph

URBAN: 56.5mpg

EXTRA-URBAN: 78.5mpg

COMBINED: 68.9mpg

EMISSIONS CO2: 95g/km

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