Having had a small car called the Saxo, I suppose it was inevitable that we were going to get one called the Jazz. This one's from Honda and it's the best little car they've ever made. At first glance, it looks like a kind of shrunken version of the previous generation Civic 5-door - not unappealing but not especially striking either. Spend a bit more time with the car however, and you begin to appreciate some of the nicer stylistic detailing. The neat tail light clusters and the flared wheel arches for example. Honda say that the styling is based on a design concept called 'zenshin', meaning new, progressive and integrated. I don't know about that but what's for certain is that this is never going to be mistaken for anything other than a Honda.

The inside is a lot more interesting that the exterior. The designers of this five-door hatchback aimed to set new class standards in terms of interior space and used some clever MPV-style tweaks in order to do it. Which is good news for women who want people carrier-style cleverness but still want a small, compact and nippy little car. Moving the fuel tank from beneath the rear seats to a position under the front pair liberates the floor of the cabin and allows the seats to be folded into all sorts of permutations. Granted, you don't get the option of removing the rear seats but they almost make up for this in their sheer versatility. An innovative retraction system means that you're able to collapse the rear seats into the footwell with the headrests in place. What's more impressive still is that this action doesn't involve scurrying around the car to manually slide the front seats forward, it can all be accomplished from the rear door thanks to a convenient set of levers. The result is a perfectly flat load floor 1740mm in length. Sports fans will appreciate the fact that if you then recline the front passenger seats, there's enough room inside the diminutive Jazz for a pair of 240cm long downhill skis! Needless to say, I didn't put this to the test. Honda have focused on making this trick seating system as user friendly as possible. Think of how many MPVs claim to have removable seats, only for them to prove so heavy that any thought of shifting them brings on a latent hiatus hernia. Vauxhall showed that smart seating solutions should be the work of a couple of seconds and the Jazz brought this concept into the supermini class.

As already suggested, this isn't a big car. Still, although the external dimensions only read 3,830mm long by 1,675mm wide, the Jazz is a good 1,525 mm tall. I found the driving position to be fairly upright and I would have thought that even those well over six feet tall would be able to find a comfortable position behind the wheel. Once there, they'll spot a bold curve to the centre console with a number of equally striking colour and texture combinations used around the cabin. The theme of greys and metallic edging works very well, with even the door cards featuring contrasting obliquely-scythed designs. On the road, I have to say that there are betting riding and more refined superminis available - though the Jazz isn't especially bad in either of these respects. In fact, if you like a sporty note to your engine and you don't mind a slightly stiff set-up in terms of ride, then you might very well like it. A metallic instrument panel and an aluminium-covered cluster of three main dials make the Jazz appear somewhat sporty. As would be expected from a car that will have to play the family role at times, the cupholder count is well up to the class standard with a pair positioned aft of the floor-mounted gearlever and a couple more in front. Arrive home with a soggy KFC Variety Meal in a Honda Jazz and you've only yourself to blame. The floor mounted centre console is usefully sized and there's also a storage tray that runs beneath the instrument panel big enough to fit an atlas.

I liked the Jazz. It was a refreshing change from some of the duller Superminis around and felt lively to drive. At last Honda have produced a credible small car. And not before time. 17th February 2008