Mazda 2

Try to picture the old Mazda2. No? Unaccountably tall of physical stature, but short on significance or interest, it was a car to forget. The new one's much more compelling. It looks better, and it drives better. It also - I hope - marks an engineering milestone and turning point for superminis in general.

Mazda has managed to cut 100kg - around 10 per cent - out of the car compared with the old one, so it goes faster and uses a lot less fuel. Cars in general are locked into a cycle of porkiness, where each generation is bigger, safer, better- equipped and thus heavier than the last. This one is safer and better- equipped, but smaller and lighter.

Breaking the cycle is an achievement. Especially in a supermini, where aluminium is too expensive -meeting crash standards is hard enough anyway, but harder still with reduced weight and size. Yet they tell us the Mazda2 is set up for a five-star Euro NCAP rating. The secret is a new body structure, using a lot of newly developed steel that's four times as strong as the usual stuff.

You don't just feel the result in performance, though under 10secs to 60mph from a 1.5 is more than respectable. It's the whole way the car feels. It's agile, lively into the turns and on the brakes, sharp to the throttle, a machine that dances where a fatboy Clio plods.

Admittedly, on this early short test run (it goes on sale in September),it was hard to be definitive about all this, and there was a sense of slight imprecision to the motions. It also seems Mazda has managed to go some way to addressing its old bogeys, road noise and running refinement. It doesn't feel tiny or tinny.

The swooping arches, dart-like windowline and compact size make it a looker, and next year's three-door is better again. Inside, the atmosphere is fresh and airy, and the style of the dash is fine on the eyes, but cheap to the touch of your fingertips. Is low cost or low weight the excuse for these hard, nasty plastics? Either way, they're a mistake - a few pence or a few grammes would make all the difference.

Has this compactness and lightness made things more cramped than the old boxy Mazda2? Although the front and rear passenger space hasn't shrunk - unless you wear a tall hat - some things have had to give. To make the back end stronger, the tailgate opening is smaller. To save weight, the seat-fold mechanism is simpler.

You probably won't notice. It should sell well, but not well enough to save the world alone. But the same platform will go into next year's Fiesta, too. Every little helps...

Paul Horrell