Celebrate the inventive world of city cars with these 16 used car bargains

Nothing demonstrates the design chutzpah of the city car world quite so proudly. The Mk1 Ford Ka launched in 1996 and lived a whole 12 years – twice the normal model cycle of a car – before being replaced by a duller Mk2, a muted twin of the reborn Fiat 500.

It’s fair to say the public took a little time wrapping its head around Ford’s original ‘teapot’, and the gradual erosion of its rugged black bumpers implies our vain tastes needed to be met halfway by its ingenious design. The man responsible, the late Chris Svensson, went on to pen the modern-day Ford GT. And his humble Ka has since morphed into a minor classic – one that’s still ludicrously affordable even with a tiny handful of miles to its name. Snap one up while you still can.

Britain’s weather is getting crummier by the year as the grasp of climate change makes our roads more treacherous than ever. Fiat’s more rugged Panda used to be the darling of the rural set – a perfect addition to any middle-class farm needing its own wheels – but now our cities are wetter and grimier than ever, perhaps it more responds to the calling its regular, front-driven base car so ably answered for decades.

Whether the new Grande Pande spawns a proper 4x4 spin-off, we don’t yet know. So make hay while the rain pours and bag this low-mileage Noughties example for the cost of a lease deal deposit.

“Honda’s first electric car is impossibly cute, beautifully engineered and crammed with tech,” we said, before promptly giving it multiple TopGear.com awards. It then sold in modest numbers and was quietly taken off sale after three years. Oops!

We stand by every word, though. Pioneers of an art don’t always enjoy the rich rewards bestowed upon those who trail eagerly behind. When new, the crisp, retro-chic of the ickle ‘e and its genuinely lounge-like interior were swiftly undone by its sizeable price tag and sub-100-mile range. 

Used, though, its values are wholly tempting and be honest: do you really need to cover that many miles in a city car?

Naturally, the stock, two-seat Smart is the true king of any city. Explore any of Europe’s most romantic, stylish or aspirational capitals and dinky Fortwos are sprinkled everywhere, parked every which way to the kerb. No wonder Smart is supplementing its new line in electric SUVs with a comeback for its most iconic model.

But in the spirit of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’s original host, ‘we don’t want to give you that!’ We’re car enthusiasts/bores at TopGear.com, so it’s the original Fortwo’s weirdo sports car cousin that we implore you to buy instead. 

Available in open and closed roadster formats, with the option of a 101bhp Brabus version for good measure, this is a rear-engined, rear-wheel drive, turbocharged sports car for under five grand. Just don’t try parking this Smart perpendicular to the pavement…

Cogitating whether you’re meant to make the jump into the world of electric (or not) may currently feel like deciphering the Da Vinci code, but there’s clearly copious benefit to zero tailpipe emissions in cities and a car that can hook up cheaply to your home utilities plan. Making the leap is still scary, however.

Less scary if you’re laying down just two grand in the process, though. If you thought the Honda e was a brave EV pioneer, get a load of the wardrobe-on-wheels Mitsubishi i-MiEV. It went on sale in 2009 at a whopping £38k before government grants, and all for a princely real-world range of, um, 60 miles. 

Yeah, EVs moved on apace after the little Mitsu’s introduction, but it dawdled so that Taycans can sprint. And now they’re dirt cheap.

Double your budget, sprinkle on a mite more, and you can have something far more desirable. The BMW i3 is quickly resembling a modern classic, not least for being a city car with a carbon core and proficient rear-driven power. A BMW in its very DNA, then. And we’ll never bore of an interior which would look and feel good in any EV launched now.

No wonder the new iX3 is so good; BMW has occupied the world of electric for comfortably over a decade now. If you’re never leaving the city then avoid the range-extender hybrid and go for a pure EV.

Volkswagen’s city car form is inconsistent. Between the sheer class of early Polos and the clever little Up came the dull-as-leftover-soup Fox. Perhaps its most joyful slice of urban transport is the Lupo, though. Sold between 1998 and 2005, it spun petrol and diesel variants and wore a plethora of wild and vivacious colour schemes. 

You had a wide range of choice between the 94mpg Lupo 3L, inadvertently influenced by rumours of the Clio V6 should you believe the legend, and this, the spunky little Lupo GTi.

Its 1.6-litre engine was twinned with five (and subsequently six) manual gears for claims of 123bhp and 127mph. Not that urban 20mph limits will welcome either of those, but here’s a city car that will truly shine when its wings are spread outside of the ring road.

Prefer your dinky little hot hatchbacks to slide around impishly in corners, shaking off superfluous interior trim as they do so? In period, the little Lupo battled the Saxo for supremacy. 

And Citroen’s giveaway deals (free insurance, even for young ‘uns!) seemed to hand victory to the VTR and its more sprightly VTS sibling. At least in terms of sheer sales volume.

Once upon a time, these were on every street corner, but rust and lift-off oversteer – plus a rampant Max Powering scene – have whittled their population down considerably. Still cheap enough to take a punt, though. And still an absolute giggle to drive, weighing comfortably under a tonne even with a driver on board.

We were going to dangle a 106 Rallye before your eyes now, trapped hopelessly (but thrillingly) in a French hot hatch rabbit hole. But Peugeot followed up one of the dinky performance car greats with… well, something else entirely. A car which flopped new but looks weirdly, temptingly good value now.

The 1007 won a Top Gear award in its day, but inventive sliding doors which impressed at launch proved dim-witted in the long haul, their added weight sandbagging the one-double-oh-seven with lacklustre performance. Not least in the context of those rampant old 106s before it.

But this one is a mere two grand, wears a swish colour and has covered modest miles. And who needs to go that quick in town anyway?

Quite how it’s taken us this long to recommend a kei car, we’ll never know. But there are vast swathes of boxy little beauties from the Far East that we could fill the rest of your tea break listing. 

They’re a TopGear.com obsession and could revitalise inner-city driving if pesky safety regs didn’t get in the way of official imports. 

But plenty still trickle onto British shores, and if the cutesy, ‘Kinder Egg toy Hummer’ look of the Suzuki Hustler appeals, then so should the vibrant yellows, pinks and blues of those occupying just this one dealer. Failing that, how about a classy, ‘wine red’ Honda N-One?

The true beauty of kei car regulations is the inventiveness of those who comply with them, however. JDM carmakers demonstrate a flair for navigating rulebooks and their loopholes that’d make Ron Dennis blush, with diminutive kei dimensions breeding people carriers, fire engines and – as you see here – mid-engine, rear-drive roadsters.

Okay, so kei rules mean the gorgeous, shrunken-NSX lines of the Honda S660 clothe a car with just 63bhp and 0-62mph claims well into double figures.

But in the traffic of its native Tokyo, that’s never an issue. A surprising number have made it to Britain; priced close to a new Kia Picanto, we know which we’d rather slink around bus lanes and dodge yellow box fines in.

A bit of kei car spirit did officially make it to the UK, mind, even if the Toyota iQ’s *outrageous* 67bhp output and *leviathan* 1.68m width placed it comfortably outside of those stringent regulations.

But like all the best JDM miniatures it squeezed a baffling amount into its weeny footprint, seating four (well, 3+1), in a bodyshell little longer than a Smart Fortwo’s and boasting a turning circle tighter than a London cab’s.

Its headline pearlescent white paint ensured it looked not unlike a hypothetical Apple car, while its design class dazzled the industry enough to convince Aston Martin to rebadge them. The Cygnet is now a pricey cult classic all of its own, though iQs still dwell at the scruffier end of used-car forecourts for a tiny fraction of the cost. For how much longer?

The Twingo is about to enter its fourth generation, but how much the design of the latest, purely electric version apes the original tells you all you need to know about this car’s trajectory.

Renault nailed it first time, the Nineties Twingo – its name an adorable mix of twist, swing and tango, Strictly fans – funnelling the one-box design of its pioneering Espace into a smaller, more attainable car with the cutest bonnet vents.

Brits who holidayed on the continent came home smitten – only to find the car hadn’t made it to right-hand drive markets. The Mk2 and ‘3 Twingo did come here, but even with a rambunctious Renault Sport spin-off and a rear-engined layout (respectively), they never charmed like the original.

Praise be that its style is imprinted so boldly on the Mk4.

This one’s due a comeback too, apparently, with an upcoming, entry-level Audi EV rumoured to be nabbing design cues from the turn-of-the-century A2. Good news, because like so many cars on this list, it proves that the slim dimensions of a city car are prone to eke out the boldest, coolest ideas of the design community.

Among the A2’s innovations were its all-aluminium body, slim service hatch at the front (in lieu of a bonnet) and teardrop aerodynamics. Oh, and like the VW Lupo, it got a ‘3L’ variant that used a dinky diesel engine to sip fuel at a rate of three litres per 100km – aka almost 100mpg.

Crucially it looked damn cool, riding the wave of kooky Audi design started by the TT, and was a giggle to drive. Used values still loiter as low as one solitary grand, however. Snap one up before its rumoured reawakening hikes them back up.

The C1 story is interesting enough at base level: Citroen, Peugeot and Toyota all buddied up to make a refreshingly cheap, simple town car.

Halving the number of electric window switches and parcel shelf strings were the tip of a considered cost-saving exercise that launched a trio of perky little cars with thrummy 3cyl engines to market at less than seven grand apiece.

Nowadays, you can pick any of them up as an ideal starter car for as little as £700. But raise your budget to around five grand and you can have something else entirely: a race-prepped C1 ready to take part in bona fide endurance events like the C1 Racing Club 24 Hours at Silverstone. Yes please.

Image: C1 Racing Club

The original inventive city car. Alec Issigonis’ Mini rewrote the affordable car rulebook in 1959, deploying a then-rare transverse engine, front-wheel drive layout to yield 80 per cent of its floorplan for housing people rather than oily mechanicals.

It proved such a success – elbowing supposed replacements like the Austin Metro out the way in the process – that production only ceased in 2000 when the new-age BMW Mini took over. 

Those are pretty damn good too, of course, and can be acquired for significantly less than the ten grand a mint 1990s Rover Mini Cooper 1.3i now asks. Either will fix a big ol’ grin on your face.