Should you buy one?

Yes. The Picanto is a great little city car that’s far better suited to cutting around town than the superminis and small SUVs buyers now prefer. The fact that Kia has extended the Picanto’s life by facelifting it also proves there’s plenty of life in the segment yet – as does its new generation of electric rivals, such as the Leapmotor T03 and Dacia Spring.

The Picanto is fun to drive, even in its most basic form. It’s also reasonably refined for its class, it’s nippy off the line, it’s fast enough to keep up with motorway traffic, it has a long warranty, it’s supported by a comprehensive list of dealers and it’s available with the same sort of equipment you’ll find in cars from the class above.

Providing you can accept the Picanto’s short comings – small engines, space for four for only short hops and a boot that can deal with the weekly shop but not the yearly tip run – then I can’t see any reason why you won’t thoroughly enjoy owning one.

In fact, we’d sooner have a Kia Picanto over the mechanically similar Hyundai i10 because of its longer warranty, keener handling and more competitive pricing.

What we like

The Picanto drives well, it’s cheap to run and, if you go for the top-spec model, it has the same of tech you’ll find in cars from the class above. It’s spacious for its footprint and it’s comfortable for its class, providing you get one on the smallest alloys.

What we don’t like

You can get better fuel economy from larger, hybrid powered cars (such as the Toyota Yaris Cross). The cabin is also very monochrome and we miss Kia’s old 100hp turbocharged 1.0-litre petrol engine.