I drove a Renault Twingo City Car in Brazil for about a year. Initially it felt sluggish and unresponsive, but I'd been used to driving a 205 GTI. The initial low-speed acceleration was reasonable for a 1.3L engine. The car was great in the cities, very easy to park and cornered quite acceptably.

Not the best car for motorway driving. It was a struggle to get it up to about 148kmh (92mph) top speed, and had to really thrash the engine to sustain that. However, it would cruise quite happily for hour after hour at 120kmh (75mph). I didn't measure it, but the car didn't seem particularly thirsty.

My biggest complaint was the speedometer, a nasty LED display in the centre of the dashboard, very hard to read in bright sunlight, particularly as the LED seemed to lose brightness with age. This was particularly worrying where there were speed cameras, having to squint and peer at the display was potentially dangerous. At night it was no problem.

The car looked quite nice, much more stylish and with much more space inside than a similar Fiesta or Corsa. Inside the car was plasticky, door handles and other trim dropped off or snapped.

Overall, not a bad little runaround, but I wouldn't buy one for myself, the extra power of the Peugeot 205GTI felt very good after a few months driving a Twingo. Nice styling though, very practical and economical little town car.

No major mechanical problems, just a burst radiator and a worrying knocking developed when steering left, possibly a bent drive shaft.