On a purely subjective basis, the Microlino might not be my favourite car of the year – if you'll permit me to stretch the oxymoronic to the point of… well, maybe just moronic. 

This quirky runaround, this Isetta reincarnate, is a good laugh – obviously, look at it – but it's not the most fun car I've driven this year. Nor is it the most practical, efficient, sensible, capacious, comfortable, safe, well equipped or dynamic. And it's very, very far from being the quickest.

But these days, I find myself increasingly drawn to those cars that are most contextually relevant – and not just personally, but societally. Okay, yes, I live in south London, drive a maximum of 40 miles in an average week and don't have kids or a dog, so the Microlino would actually suit me down to the ground, to be honest.

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Zoom out, though, and you might join me at the conclusion that this faintly comical two-seater is not far off the exact type of vehicle we should be building and using in 2024. Well, those of us who can, at least. 

The cars we're forced to drive and buy are becoming ever more bloated, over-digitised, controversially (or forgettably) styled, uncontrollably quick and fiscally unobtainable. They are resource intensive, faddish and purposely disposable, designed to be à la mode for a maximum of a decade before being swapped for something that does the same thing for a few grand more. 

The Microlino (for better or worse) flies in the face of those conventions – most of them, at least – in its positioning as a functional and relatively basic commuter car that's specced to about the bare minimum while also retaining some level of aspirational quality. It's not got any technology to go out of date, it weighs as much as a couple of big motorbikes, it's got all the battery capacity it'll ever need and it's perfectly sized for the environments in which it's destined to be most often driven – which is more than can be said for the vast majority of EVs I drove in 2024.