Fiat Tipo car review: ‘Did I want to sit in it, or did I want to race?’

It harks back to that 80s principle that being a bit uncomfortable might do some family members a bit of good

Ah, the Fiat Tipo: they call it a multijet lounge, which gave me distinctly mixed messages. Did it want to jet, or did it want to lounge? Did I want to sit in it, or did I want to race? The cabin is spacious but beset with tiny inconveniences. The gear housing was a bit lax, so when you put it in neutral, it would transpire you'd left it in second. You could never catch it in the act, so you never knew whether it was your fault, and had to fall back on "But this has never happened to me in any other car", like a bad relationship.

The frame design is strange, with big wedges of plastic at the back; if you parked on a curve, the road was effectively all blind spot. There was a lot of red styling going on in the binnacles, which made me feel a little alarmed, as if I was being told something important in a dream. The cabin did not make me feel special: the screen was diddy and hard to read; the bits where you keep things were not where my hand wanted them to be.