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The Fiat 500 Abarth will herald a new golden age for small, cheap, rapid cars, and, frankly, we can't wait. Bring it on, Mr Brown, and thanks for our heavy fuel levy - we'll take it manfully, as usual, take it where it hurts, and we won't expect any relief from you, friend. We'll all just have to look for other ways to enjoy ourselves on these increasingly ram-jam-packed and underfunded roads, and the 500 shows us the way. Let the renaissance begin.

But a great many of us are there already, and have been for years - in Small Fast Car Deep Appreciation World, that is. Talk to someone like Paul Horrell about the greatest drive he's ever had, and something like "Fiat Uno hire car, Tenerife, 1992" might pop up immediately.

Ever hired that Uno? Or Twingo? It will have had a revvy, spirited, small four-cylinder engine dropped into a nimble, lightweight chassis, probably running on impossibly narrow tyres. Despite its utilitarian mien, it will have been yelling "Thrash me" at you and meaning it.

Take that feeling of nimbleness and that ability to see all four corners of the car, take the sense that the car is shrunken tight around you and responding quickly to your inputs, take the lovely feeling of getting to the limit easily, then explode it a hundredfold, and you'll get an idea of what that 500 Abarth is all about. It has that simplicity of purpose that makes it shine above a lot of cars 10 or 20 times the price.

The bunch of little cars you see on these pages either exist or are about to exist. We don't know too much about the next-gen Seat Ibiza Cupra, other than the fact that it'll look like the SportCoupe on p100 with added aggression - a good start - and likely be powered by a 1.4-litre turbo - and supercharged petrol engine putting out about 180bhp. If Seat can engineer some proper character into the way the Ibiza Cupra feels, it should be sensational.

As sensational as the Twingo RenaultSport? Could be a close one. The hot version of Renault's little city car is just weeks away, complete with a 1.6-litre, 133bhp naturally aspirated four-pot. And great big arches. And bucket seats. And an optional 'Cup' chassis. There's more. We understand a Fiesta ST will be on the way next year, to follow the Zetec S. We know it'll be a fair bit lighter than the last Fiesta, and we'd expect a good lump of extra power: the current ST's 148bhp looks a bit weedy next to the Corsa VXR's 189bhp and the RenaultSport Clio's 197bhp.

And what about the Mazda2? Mazda is firmly denying any plans for an MPS version, but front-and-centre of its British Motor Show stand was a bucket-seated, big-wheeled 2, 'just to gauge public reaction'. Seems like there's a will somewhere in Mazda. We can but hope.

The others we know. They have low weight and chuckability in common. They will all entertain you immensely along the right road.

The mental markers you should be getting lined up are significant. First, the weight: 1,000kg and under. Go too far above that mark, and you're too tubby. Get below it and you are being clever, Lotus-clever. A 0-60mph time of 10 seconds is perfectly adequate for this type of car, but the more you get below that, the better, obviously. To a point.

You don't want to be too fast, because that might mean unruly torque steer and a general feeling of 'engine over everything'. So the Fiat's and Twingo's just-sub-eights are about spot-on, delivered by 130-140bhp and 1.4-1.6 litres of capacity. And small engines and light weight means fuel efficiency too. That's yet another joy, thanks, Mr Brown.