Here are eight gloriously fun used city cars for less than £10k

Want a car that’s just as comfortable in a muddy field as it is on the high street? No, you don’t need a modern crossover with lashings of plastic cladding. What you really need is a dinky little Ignis with an 88bhp 1.2-litre engine, a five-speed manual gearbox and power sent to all four wheels when things get slippy. This one is a sub-£6k hybrid too which means it gets a teeny battery under the passenger seat and a motor that provides a heady 1.7bhp/36lb ft of extra shove when required.

You may not actually be going that quickly in a 143bhp Abarth 595C, but the little 1.4-litre turbo four-pot will be barking its head off like an angry terrier on Bonfire Night, and thanks to the rollback rag-top roof you’ll be able to hear every single pop’n’bang with perfect clarity. What could be more fun than that?

Here’s a 2018 car for under £10k.

Pretend you live in a remote Tuscan hamlet by buying a lifted Panda and letting it scrabble everywhere it goes at maximum attack. The one at this link is finished in Tropicalia Yellow and gets the 84bhp TwinAir two-cylinder turbo petrol engine. It’s all the car you’ll ever need.

Caught the Twingo bug but struggling to wait until the new EV arrives in late 2026? Why not pass the time with this brilliantly blue 2010 Gordini that’s currently up for less than £4k. These little Renaultsports were seriously pricey special editions at launch, but you’d now pay the same sort of money for a standard sporty Twingo from the same generation. Go on, you know you want the stripes…

Stick your sensible hat on for just a second. This is a top spec 2019 Picanto that’s available within budget and comes with an electric sunroof, heated front seats, keyless go, a rear view camera and an Apple CarPlay/Android Auto-equipped touchscreen. It’s a properly posh little car. It’s also got a fantastic little 1.0-litre turbo three-cylinder engine that loves to rev.

Yes, you can get a BMW i3 for less than £10k. In fact, you can pay as little as £5,000 if you only want a teeny battery or don’t mind the range extender. But our half-a-Twingo budget will get you a 2019 car that’s known to some as the 120Ah. That means it’s got a very respectable 42.2kWh battery, with BMW originally claiming 192 miles of range on a single charge.

Here's one in red that apparently has 97 per cent battery health.

The third generation of BMW Mini arrived in late 2013, but you’ll comfortably be able to get this 2015 Cooper S within budget. It deploys a 2.0-litre turbo four-pot for 189bhp, and this particular car comes in classic red with a white roof.

Slight bit of haggling required here, but it’ll be worth it. This 71 reg Volkswagen Up GTI is listed for £11,100, but the hotter Up was too special to miss off this list. A genuine little pocket rocket, it arrived as a throwback to the dinky, right-powered and right-sized hot hatches of yore. In fact, we miss it rather terribly. Someone hide our credit cards, quick!