If you were to design a template for the perfect city car, there would be a number of criteria you'd need to hit. The most obvious ones would be that the car in question must be compact, manoeuvrable and economical. That's the easy part. It also needs to be light in order to be quick off the mark but without feeling so flimsy that suburban mum in her Range Rover is in imminent danger of crushing you. Add cheeky styling, low cost of minor body repairs and an attractive up front price and you should have a winner on your hands. Chevrolet certainly hope so in the pert shape of the Kalos 1.2S.

Ping the badges off the Kalos and few would guess at its Korean origins. Nor would they believe it was a car that could be on your driveway for a shade under £7,300. The styling looks agreeably contemporary, and comes from the same design studio that produced handsome cars like the original VW Golf and Scirocco, the Alfa GTV, the Fiat Punto, Panda and Uno. The Giugiaro design studio has done a good job with the Kalos and even in entry-level 1.2-litre guise, it's a striking thing. The front end is quite unlike any other production car, the huge headlights striking in their clear glass lenses with indicators that are arranged almost like eyelashes.

The flanks of the Kalos are marked with three competing attention seekers. Firstly there's a swage line across the front door that heads rapidly south as soon as it encounters the rear doors. The front wheelarches are rounded, but the rears have a squared off blister above them which really shouldn't work but does. Finally there's a strange, almost vestigial, third window at the side that Chevrolet claims, "optically loosens the rear of the car." Make of that what you will.

The 1.2-litre engine is built around an alloy cylinder head and a traditional iron block and develops 72bhp which is a few more than a Skoda Fabia 1.4 can muster. It's pretty quick, accelerating through 60mph in 13 seconds although outright sprinting ability is hardly the car's forte. Instead it majors on being easy to drive and all of the controls are light and idiot-proof. A combined fuel return of some 42.8mpg makes it competitive with some of the best in class and a CO2 emissions showing of 159g/km is par for the course. As part of General Motors, Chevrolet have had their pick of parts from across the empire and have turned to Suzuki for this 1.2-litre powerplant. It was a wise move. The engine thrives on revs and it's only out on the open road that it can feel a bit breathless. In town the engine ticks all the boxes.

"The Giugiaro design studio has done a good job with the Kalos and even in entry-level 1.2-litre guise, it's a striking thing"

Features such as power steering and central locking make the Kalos 1.2 a low-hassle car. The steering column tilts through a generous range of adjustment and the front seat belts can be adjusted for height. With punchy anti-lock brakes and dual front airbags fitted as standard along with height adjustable headrests, clear side indicators and rear coat hooks, this Kalos certainly doesn't feel built down to a price. Talking of prices, you'll pay £7,295 for the three-door S version or £500 more for the same car with five doors.

Naming a car after the Greek word for 'beautiful' may be tempting fate a little but Chevrolet's Kalos looks to be able to carry it off. Part of the latest generation of superminis that attempt to cram as many MPV-style ideas as possible into their truncated dimensions, the Kalos is notably better looking than many previous attempts at this genre. Small wonder, as it was styled by Giugiaro in Turin, a design house of no little repute.

The styling is certainly eye catching, although the exterior contours have not been penned at the expense of practicality. This is, after all, a Chevrolet and must offer value for money twinned with common sense utility that buyers can relate to. One drawback is the lack of a diesel option in the Kalos line-up, though the importers don't see it that way. When you actually look at the extra upfront cost of diesel variants over their petrol-powered counterparts, they point out, you end up having to cover quite a mileage in order to make the extra cost pay off. And supermini buyers don't tend to cover large mileages. They don't tend to like paying over the odds either, so asking prices around £2,000 less than an equivalent Ford Fiesta should come as welcome news.

The passenger compartment is extremely spacious, due in no small part to the 2.48 metre wheelbase - one of the longest in the supermini class. Chevrolet claim the 955 millimetres of headroom to be a class best. The rear seat splits in the normal 60/40 manner but also has a trick up its sleeve. You can not only fold it down, but also jack-knife it forward and secure it to the back of the front seats. This little party trick frees up a cavernous 735 litres of available luggage space, in effect more than quadrupling the usual capacity of 175 litres with the rear parcel shelf in place.

Ride and handling have been optimised for British roads at the Motor Industry Research Association test track near Nuneaton. Chevrolet is one of the first manufacturers to cotton onto the fact that what works on billiard-smooth German roads often seems a little less than optimal on the sort of British B-road that has been ravaged by the gas, telephone, electricity and cable TV companies.

The Chevrolet Kalos 1.2S looks set to be the most popular pick of the range. With an impressive, economical engine and keen pricing, it has what it takes to upset a few apple carts. The perfect supermini for the price of a city car? Not quite, but it'll do for now.