THINK Mitsubishi and you don’t tend to imagine a little green number like this.

But this lightweight city car really moves and you’d never guess it was only a 1.2 engine powering the sprightly five-door hatchback. It’s pretty noisy at speed, there’s quite a bit of bodyroll around bends and not much grip at all, but these were pretty much the only negatives. It’s fun to drive, the ride was comfortable and firm and even the bright ‘pop’ green grew on me, although rest assured other colours are available, including plasma purple and sapphire blue along with more conventional black, white and silver.

There is a choice of 1.0-litre or 1.2-litre three-cylinder petrol engines. A five-speed manual gearbox is standard, and a continuously variable CVT automatic transmission is available on the Mirage 3.

The Mirage replaces the Mitsubishi Colt as the company’s budget car and you can’t really argue with the price – it starts at £7,995 and rises to £12,999 for a higher-spec model. Insurance costs are unsurprisingly low and with CO2 emissions less than 100g/km, there’s no road tax to pay, or London Congestion Charge. And with almost 66mpg, those annoying trips to the garage will hopefully be rare.

Standard equipment levels are good, with the basic '1' trim including electric front windows, CD radio, and stability and traction controls. The '2' adds manual air-con, privacy glass, remote central locking, power to the rear windows, parcel shelf, autolights and wipers and colour keyed mirrors and door handles.

I drove the range-topping '3' which added alloy wheels, automatic air con, parking sensors and leather steering wheel and gear knob.

There is 235 litres of boot space, which rises to 600 litres with the 60/40 split rear seats folded. It’s also worth mentioning that the Mirage has a very small turning circle - nine metres – making it very easy to manoeuvre in restricted spaces.

Each model comes with stability control and emergency brake assist and front, side and full-length curtain airbags are also fitted and Isofix mountings in the rear. It is designed to ensure maximum crash protection from all angles and directs impact forces away from the occupants. Although certain parts of the car might be damaged in any impact, the passengers will remain within a steel safety cell.

Impact testing showed Mirage has the highest collision safety among its class in Japan.

Factfile
Car:
Mitsubishi Mirage 3
Price: £11,999
Top speed: 112mph
0-62mph: 11.7 seconds
Fuel: 65.7mpg
CO2 emissions: 100g/km