My car is about to die. It's an Audi A4, dating back to just after the dawn of time. It seemed pretty cool and Germanic to me at the time, but now it's about as fashionable as Michael Douglas.

And, as befits a car of its age and experience, it's in a poor state. The offside front wing is deeply scored as the result of a traumatic collision with the side of a skip. (The skip pulled out, I continue to maintain.) Pigeon droppings, left too long to their own devices, have bitten into the paint finish on the bonnet. (What does today's pigeon eat? An exclusive diet of ground glass and Brillo pad, it would appear, washed down with a carafe of white spirit.)

And it's even worse inside, where regular valeting, as recommended in the manual, ceased shortly after grunge music. Since then, the car has hosted the formative journeys of a number of children, and no car ever looks entirely well after that. In fact, I sometimes look at the state of the interior and wonder whether those children weren't actually delivered in there.

The cloth now clinging angrily to the seats seems to have been stitched together using an exclusive selection of tramps' trousers. The carpet has absorbed anything up to a quart of boiled milk from slopped coffees. There are wrappers on the floor from chocolate bars that they don't even make any more. There is a mound of rubbish in the back the size of a landfill project and the entire car would almost certainly be attracting attention from scavenging seagulls if the windows still opened. But they don't.

Altogether, the car is so trounced that when I tried to give it away to a friend the other day, for absolutely nothing and with a free tank of petrol thrown in, the friend declined. He didn't even want the petrol - not given where it had been.

It's probably got to go. To this end, I've been on the secondhand car-buying websites: www.webuyanyoldpieceofjunk.com, www.we'lltakeyourcrappyAudi.co.uk, and so on. Handed a brief resumé for this particular car, though, nearly all of them abruptly become www.onsecondthoughtswewon't.com.

One site did come through with a tear-inducingly token cash offer. But I know what will happen. I'll turn up at the depot at the advised time and they'll take one crisp look and revise their offer downwards. “There are anything up to 17,000 white van-marks here that were not detailed on your original report. Plus there's a really nasty smell of boiled milk. Nought pence is as high as we are going.”

What to replace it with, though? Something smaller and more economical, perhaps, in keeping with the times. Something nippy and clean and fresh-scented. Something, above all, new and therefore as yet gratifyingly unspoilt by flying vermin. Or small children, for that matter. Something that has, up to now, never even seen a skip, let alone tried to drive underneath one.

The new Fiat 500, for instance. That'll do. There's cute and there's retro. And then there's this brilliantly designed four-seater bubble car, which is currently stuffing the opposition in any retro contest you care to organise, while simultaneously out-cuteing everything on the road by a factor of around 12. It's Britain's most covetable car. Across the nation, people even now are driving perfectly acceptable cars into skips in order to have a reason to replace them.

With its frisky chrome whiskers and general sense of good cheer, it is recognisably linked to the classic Italian buzz-about of the Fifties and Sixties, but differs in a) being pretty comfortable, considering, and b) not sounding like an enraged hornet whenever you accelerate. As a feat of timely updating, it sits right up there with BMW's Mini, which is now issued as standard with every job as an estate agent. Eventually the 500 may even become as ubiquitous, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how much you feel your individuality is bound up with your choice of car. Perhaps anticipating problems in this area, Fiat has at least provided a huge range of means to personalise your 500 - stickers, badges, bits of chrome, carpet mats.

Overall, though, it's bright, neat and uncomplicated. What's more, buy one, and you can say that you own the 2008 version of the car that was the original choice for the chase sequence in The Italian Job. (Little-known fact: the Mini Cooper squeezed it out.) And it won't smell of old milk. Not initially, anyway. So, where do I sign?

Top speed: 99mph

Acceleration: 0-62 in 12.9 seconds

Average consumption: 55.4mpg

CO2 emissions: 119g/km

Eco rating: 9/10

One careful owner: Fiona Phillips

On the stereo: Estelle

In the glovebox: Tic Tacs

Bound for: Milan

Buy it because: it's telling you to

Marks out of 10: 9

Price: from £8,100