worry when their proportion of small cars is nearly twice the proportion for the overall market.

The obvious route out of the small car ghetto is via crossovers. Kia and Hyundai have proved that it is quite possible to sell SUVs for £25,000-plus, when it is impossible to sell non-premium saloons or coupés at that price. That is why Ford of Europe is so keen to get the next-generation Edge from the USA: it can sell it to the sort of people who, a generation, ago, would have bought a Granada.

That makes the lack of medium-sized SUVs from mainstream European manufacturers all the more significant. The French have tried rebadging other peoples’ (Renault with the Samsung Koleos and Peugeot/Citroën with the Mitsubishi Outlander), but they were never going to work in image-conscious Europe. Fiat has actively chosen not to sell the decent-enough Freemont in the UK, which looks an ever stranger decision as SUV sales continue to rise.

For some manufacturers, the problem is they have no platform large enough to carry a mid-sized SUV because they only make small cars – a vicious circle it is going to be hard to break out of.