Kia has a brand new car driving out of its Irish dealer showrooms for 2010 which offers a real alternative to the C segment compact 5-door hatch. But in fact, the new Venga is really a supermini segment car, and an MPV too. The car is also the second Kia to be completely designed, engineered and built in Europe, specifically for the European marketplace.

I drove it in and around Rome last week and came away not just impressed, but enthused about a car that in reality will sell in relatively small numbers in Ireland. That's if it is confined in buyer perception to the small MPV stable. It deserves more.

In the short story of Venga, the Irish version will be an A CO2-rated car powered by a 90hp 1.4 diesel which Kia has developed themselves. They're bringing it in with their EcoDynamics package which includes a stop-start system and low rolling resistance tyres to keep it within the magical, for Irish motorists, lowest tax band. The engineers reckon this package is worth an 8 percent fuel saving, particularly in the urban and suburban situation where the target buyer mostly lives.

There are two grades, LX and EX, which are €1,300 apart in price terms, the opening bid being €18,395. Those figures are a straight shoot at the Opel Meriva, now quite aged but one of the most successful small MPVs in the overall European market in its time. The Venga, though, is and looks 21st century. The style is engaging from the outset. Cheerful but not cuddly. A certain edginess without being agressive. Nor does it actually look like what we shape MPVs as in this segment. In fact, it looks like a rather smooth compact hatch.

It is right on the supermini footprint though, at just a tad over four metres long. Within that it has the longest wheelbase in the segment, and that's a key to the secrets of its interior accommodation and the dynamics of its ride and handling. The driver area is an exemplar of clarity in information. The primary instruments are crisply backlit white on a black backround, the large speedo central where it should be and flanked by simple rev-counter and fuel guage. The central controls for radio and climate are also large, clearly labelled, and easy to access without taking attention from the road. For me there was plenty of seat/steering wheel adjustment.

Headroom front and rear is exactly the same as in the compact cee'd from the same brand. There's actually more legroom in the rear of the Venga. And luggage capacity, depending on how you format things, can go to the quite phenomenal for the class. There's an overall good style about the interior, with a nice mix of fresh, gentle funkiness and the downright practical.

As usual on these international launches, time with the car is limited. But a test route that was, being so close to Rome itself, kind of difficult, did give me an opportunity to get a preliminary feel for the car. In the traffic holdups of an afternoon the stop-start worked as it should, providing little time oases of quiet. The diesel engine had a decent amount of torque but you need to keep the revs up for solid progress, especially going upwards through the winding hills around Frascati. Coming back down along the northern edge of Lago Albano, with the Pope's Castel Gandolfo residence dominating the other side, was a much more relaxed affair and showed the car more of what it will be like in Irish conditions. They seem to have the ride/handling thing well sorted, and the hills showed off the balance of the electric power steering, a system which in general seems to have matured on most cars now after an icky start.

In a business climate which has seen seriously falling sales across Europe (and catastrophic ones in Ireland), Kia as a brand has been performing quite well. Largely because it is coming from a smaller numerical base, but also because it has the kind of cars that people want to buy just now. Good quality at affordable prices. The brand has done well in the successful scrappage schemes in various European markets. Now that we have, finally and after the loss of more than 10,000 jobs in the motor trade, a scrappage scheme here, Kia Ireland looks well set to capitalise locally. A and B CO2 cars are what is specified. The Venga sits well in the overall scheme. And Kia Ireland has managed to acquire the web domain scrappage.ie, where any info on the whole scrappage thing and especially Kia's offerings, can be easily checked. I'll have a full review of the car here in early 2010.