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  The Fiesta meets meets so many requirements so thoroughly. Photo Gallery

Yer need the biggest car you can get, mate.

“Six-cylinder’s the only way to go, mate.” “Small cars aren’t safe, mate.” “Small cars are … well, they’re just not real cars, mate.”

All pearls I’ve heard over the decades from various friends, family members and other ill-assorted members of the great Strayan car-buying public. All the equivalent of admitting: “I’m an automotive Neanderthal for whom it is forever 1959.”

It’s not as though the latest Ford Fiesta Zetec is the first car to refute those old world illusions – the indecent haste with which punters are forsaking large cars for small states that loud enough. But you could argue that there is nothing to be had today – certainly not at this price point – that meets so many requirements so thoroughly.

Although the electric-assisted steering doesn’t quite equal the feel provided by the previous generation Fiesta, it steers and handles at the top of its segment.

This version lacks back doors, but rear seat space is more than adequate for offspring. Complimenting the full array of safety acronyms are those which (apparently – don’t ask me, I just got my first iPod) denote audio nirvana. If fit and finish are evidently to the fore, there’s that less tangible but just as important feel of quality. It’s something that Europe just does best.

Indeed, the only major complaint I can summon after three weeks is that strong sunlight makes for some serious reflective distraction in that long, long, sloping windshield.

A less substantive whinge is that we had to hand the Fiesta back earlier than planned. This being the time of the year when every publication and website (many of which you’ve never heard of or would wish to) plan their car of the year judging, and so every available Fiesta has been wrangled back into the Ford garage for prepping.

Bugger.

Whatever store you happen to set by these often arbitrary and contrived titles, I hope the Fiesta thrives, not simply because it deserves the widest recognition, but because what recognising a car of this type would represent.