You don't need a big car. Not just in the sense that you don't actually need four-wheel drive to nip down to Sainsbury's (as Alexei Sayle pointed out some many years ago), or that you don't need a V12 twin turbo-charged piece of Italian lunacy to nip up the M6 to see your mum (especially given that you shouldn't really be doing more than 70). Or even that you don't need seating for seven in your mega-people carrier when you have a family of four. No: You don't need a big car – and you shouldn't even desire one – because small cars are so fantastically good these days, as well as greener, cheaper to run and easier to park in clogged up streets. The scrappage scheme, the still stratospheric cost of fuel – all contribute to the small car revolution. Perhaps more of us are being persuaded, by attractive design and harder economic times, that, no, we don't need such a large set of wheels as maybe we'd assumed.

At a time when the car industry has had its tyres slashed by the recession, city car sales are powering ahead, double where they were last year and three times their level in the last gasps of the boom, in 2007, while sports car sand SUVs are slumping. Smaller cars dominate the sales charts as never before. Suddenly the Hyundai i10 is the best-selling car in the UK to private buyers, a parking space once reserved for bigger Fords and Vauxhalls. The scrappage scheme has been responsible for some of that buyer enthusiasm for smaller, cheaper models. A discount of £2,000 on the £236,400 list price of a Bentley Brooklands obviously doesn't provide much additional incentive for you to acquire that admittedly impressive personal transport. But £2,000 off the £7,200 cost of a Hyundai i10 or a £6,495 Kia Picanto makes for a more tempting proposition. As you say goodbye to your creaky old motor you are welcomed to a world of manufacturers' warranty and effortless assured reliability. Indeed, in the slightly bizarre event that you traded in a 1980s vintage Rolls-Royce Silver Spur for a Renault Clio you would miss little in the way of creature comforts or much performance, though you'd miss the Flying Lady guiding you down the highway.

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