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The new Pixo is cheap, is pretty nippy around town, and, perhaps best of all, has done away with the glove compartment altogether

During the course of automobile history, there have been some strange car parts with strange names – crankshaft, for example, manifold gasket, rear gusset – but none has become as fixed and misleading a fixture as the "glove compartment". Has anyone, with the possible exception of ­Kenneth More, ever placed their gloves in the glove compartment? Of course not. For a start, there's no room for them. Why? Because that huge car manual that you have no intention of ever opening takes up all the space. With ingenuity and ­determination, it's just about possible to squeeze in a CD, but chances are the effort will warp the disc.

New designs and innovations come and go, but the glove compartment, in all its frustrating uselessness, stubbornly remains. Until now. One of the small pleasures of the pleasurably small Nissan Pixo is that it does not have a glove compartment. Instead, it has a glove slot, a sort of open rack where you'd expect to find the glove compartment. It's generously large, with more than enough space for an unused car manual and all manner of random stuff that looks too messy spread around the floor. In fact, it occupies roughly the same cubic area as the rest of the car, which is not a thing of expansive comfort.

But then, it's not meant to be. Space saved is money saved with the Pixo. And nowhere have the readies been so conspicuously unspent as in the boot. I say boot, but it turns out that it's really just a glove compartment without a car manual. Putting anything larger than a used hanky in it involves folding down the rear seats. You can forget visiting Ikea unless it's to collect a catalogue – there's room for that in the glove slot.

Further economies have been made on design and production costs by cleverly taking a pre-existing car – namely the Suzuki Alto – and sticking a new badge on it, along with a new bumper, grille and ­headlights. It's a bit like sticking a bandage around Britney Spears and hoping we'll think she's Lady Gaga.

The result of all this cosmetic ­disguise is that the most basic ­version of the Pixo is, at less than six grand, about the cheapest car you can buy this side of Rawalpindi. It's not pretty or fast, but the three-­cylinder engine makes a glorious sound and lends an impression of perkiness that doesn't necessarily correlate with the speedometer.

I drove the Pixo around a snowbound London. It could have been a Holiday On Ice experience, but it felt stable in the way that smaller vehicles often don't. Best of all, the heating was so toasty, I had no need for gloves. Which was just as well because I couldn't remember where I had left them.MotoringAndrew Anthony
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On the road: Nissan Pixo Tekna was originally published by Technology: Motoring | guardian.co.uk. Read the full story by clicking here.