Going by the test results published by EuroNCAP, the independent body that accesses the safety standards of new cars, the Smart ForTwo is one tough cookie. It scored a four out of five star ranking in 2007 and if there’s ever a choice of which vehicle to have a prang in, the Smart’s cabin is potentially a better place to be than a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Mind you, the ForTwo is a tiny thing, while the Grand Cherokee is erm, grand.

More and more buyers are taking the EuroNCAP score into consideration when shopping, which is whole point of the tests in the first place: to urge buyers to demand for safer cars from manufacturers.

So in the example, the Smart should be an excellent car to have – if it was ever available here.

Except that it isn’t. The thing about the Smart, as capable as it is in keeping its occupants from harm in an accident, is its higher propensity to demonstrate this ability.

In a concrete jungle of big and chunky SUVs, often inattentively driven, the diminutive city car can easy be missed in the mirrors, which is why I always advice that small cars should be painted in bright colours for their safety.

But other than the ridicule that comes with driving a neon-yellow Smart, the bigger issue is its driving performance. The best active safety feature that any car can have, on top of an attentive driver, is the power to overtake safely and a car like the Smart simply doesn’t have it. Sure it’s nippy enough squeezing in gridlock traffic but it’s out of its depth on open roads. Highways are absolutely out of bounds.

More relevant to us is the idea of a spacious people mover with a very road-tax friendly engine capacity. The thing may seem brisk enough on your test drive with the pretty sales person as the only passenger (such test drives always feel too brief) but load the MPV with the clan and luggage for a weekend up North and it’s a different picture.

Don’t get me wrong, it’ll be stupid to buy a new car that scores no stars on EuroNCAP and we don’t need 1000bhp just to ‘overtake safely’ but you just won’t know how much good having a responsive and sizeable stable of horses at your command – and you probably won’t want to find out for yourself.

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