Yet, I look through the lists at the back of this magazine and I can find something wrong with every single model in there. And when you think we've had the car for nearly 120 years, I find that a bit depressing.

But then I arrived at 'S', and sitting there was the Subaru Legacy Outback. I stopped for a moment and thought: "Hmmm..."

What is a Subaru? To those in bobble hats, it is a machine that comes out of the night and spits stones into your face. To those with baseball caps, it is a fire-breathing incarnation from the pixellated world of the PlayStation, a device whose pops and bangs enliven the local supermarket car park on a Saturday night.

But then to those in hats made from tweed, it is a car for the farm, something you used to buy, until recently, from the same place you bought your seeds and plough.

To those of an Impreza disposition, its four-wheel-drive system means better donuts. To those on the farm, it means you can reach a stranded sheep when it's two in the morning and snowing.

In town, we find the same thing. The eco-hobbits don't realise it's a four-wheel-drive SUV. It's just a rather fine-looking estate car which costs less than half what you're expected to pay for a similarly commodious Porsche Cayenne.

And to everyone, a Subaru stands as a shining beacon of hope that one day, all cars will be made this way. When you slam the door, it makes exactly the same sound as a recently shot pheasant hitting the ground, and that, as everyone knows, is one of the most satisfying noises in the world.

Plainly, this attention to detail goes further than the door though, because in every survey on reliability, Subaru always comes in the top five.

But it's not a convertible, I hear you cry. That's true, but the last version I drove had such a massive sunshine roof, it may as well have been.

The Legacy Outback, then, covers more of the bases for more of the time than anything else. And that's the hardest trick of all. It's a big, small, fast, economical, well-made, cheap, fine-handling, comfortable SUV that's not an SUV.

Is it therefore the best car in the world? Well yes, obviously, except for one thing: if I had £30,000 to spend on a set of wheels, I'd have an Alfa Brera.