Standing next to the Daihatsu Terios is exactly like standing 10 miles away from a normal 4x4. It has the same chunky styling and the same raised body, but everything is much, much smaller. You look at the aerial, for example, and think: “Is that for receiving Radio 2 or is it for instructions from the remote control handset?” And then you look under the bonnet and there, where you would normally expect to find a hulking 3.1 litre engine, you instead get an anagram: a 1.3.

The price is especially tiny. The Sport model you see here comes with antilock braking, electric windows and air-conditioning, but it’s less than £12,000. The base model, the Tracker, is just £9,995. And that makes it a rival for the McMeal as the bargain of the century.

To fill it with fuel costs less than 30 quid, and to fill it with people takes about five seconds. So obviously I took it to Lilliput, a land where the Gulliver X5 and the Land Cruisers roam. I took it shooting.

It was on one of my favourite shoots of the year, not because of the birds or the views or the people — all of which were excellent — but because of the drinking.

On a normal shoot, after the second or third drive, everyone gathers round the nearest Land Rover to eat sausages and splosh a bit of vodka or sherry into the soup. But here it was like a muddy, outdoor version of Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown in the film Cocktail. You give the sausages to the dogs and start mixing.

“Tarts’ martini anyone?” A tarts’ martini, apparently, was what professional girls used to drink before the real martini came along.

It’s gin and sherry — perfectly ghastly, unless you liven it up with some sloe gin, whisky and a hint of oxtail soup. I tried some of it, and then, to take the taste away, I had a couple of bloody-hellfire-and-holy-mother-of-Marys. Maybe it was the wasabe or maybe it was the Tennents extra-strength horseradish, but whatever, I needed a couple of beers afterwards to put my mouth out.

By this time I’d rather forgotten my name, and then I was introduced to something called the King’s Ginger Liqueur, which, according to both out-of-focus labels on the bottle, was specially made in Holland for Berry Brothers & Rudd of St James’s in London.

God it was good. It was like having all my blood replaced with a cocktail of warm ass’s milk and pethidine while someone poured hot gingery honey down my throat. And then, after a glass or two — or was it five? — everyone became “my best mate” and I declared unending love for the keeper.

What interests me most, however, about this nectar of the gods, was the label on the back which says it was developed in the reign of Edward VII at the request of the king’s doctors, as a warming drink for the monarch to take while out and about in his new horseless carriage.

In other words, it was specifically designed by doctors as an accompaniment for driving. It doesn’t work, though, because after a couple you’d find yourself looking at the car’s door handle, thinking: “Why does everything have to be so complicated?” Obviously, after this much drink we couldn’t do any more shooting. We were so drunk we couldn’t even drive, not that this is a problem with the Daihatsu.

The spoiler is deceptive. Well, it’s not a spoiler at all. It’s a handle so that you can carry the car home when you’re too pissed to drive.

Actually, the biggest problem with taking the Terios on a shoot is finding the damn thing after each drive. Once it was under a leaf. On another occasion it was stuck between the treads on the sole of my wellington.

But that, it must be said, is the only time it did get stuck. Of course, had we had any rain at all this summer, things might have been different, but I must report that it had just enough ground clearance to traverse the rutted tracks, and that I never needed the locking centre-differential once.

What’s more, the boot was big enough for the birds I shot (all two of them) and just wide enough for my piece. As a farm car then, as a rural knockabout, this shot of schnapps is just as good as 10 pints of beer. It’s absolutely excellent.

Everywhere else, however, there are some drawbacks. First of all, while this may appear to be the ideal city 4x4 because it takes up less road space than a tricycle, there are only two seatbelts in the back, which is a damn nuisance if you have three kids.

Also, it really isn’t much cop to drive. They say in the bumf that it will go from 0 to 60mph in 12 or so seconds, but I find that hard to believe. It may be the same engine that you get in a Toyota Yaris, but up past 4000rpm it sounds like it’s in pain. By 5000 you’d have to have the mechanical sympathy of a Luddite to go any further.

And as for the top speed of 90 — really? I suppose if you took a long run-up on, say, the Jubilee Way in Dover, and then kept on going right over the cliffs, you might just reach 90 before you hit the sea. But on a road, even a long one, even a long downhill one, 80 is your realistic top whack.

And then you’d better pray you don’t inadvertently run over a bump, because the body then behaves in ways that are hard to describe. Imagine a boneless man being plugged into the mains and you’ll have some idea of the unusual twists and squirms. It’s weird.

I imagined that it might be a bit too soft, but then I hit one of those sharp speed bumps doing, oh . . . about 15mph or so, and I knew softness certainly wasn’t the problem. My teeth did too.

So while it may work as a piece of agricultural equipment, it’s too cramped, too slow and too uncomfortable to be much of a companion in the grind of everyday life.

There’s something else, too. Once, many years ago at a Daihatsu driving event in Japan, I stuffed a Charade into a bank of earth, tearing off the entire front end and writing it off completely. The man from Daihatsu wasn’t bothered, though. When I apologised to him, he said: “Don’t worry, we make one every 23 seconds.”

There was no sense then, and there’s none now, that Daihatsu makes cars because it loves them. It makes cars to make money. Unfortunately, with the exception of Honda, this is the Japanese way and it’s the main reason their cars are so soulless.

Yet somehow the Terios isn’t soulless at all. It’s what a girl would call “sweet”, and I see it too. Here’s a car that has the doe-eyed appeal of a baby seal, the cuteness of a puppy dog, and the “aah” factor of a school nativity play. Here is a car that you’d like to bring inside on cold winter evenings so it could sit by the fire. Here is a car, strangely, that you just can’t help liking.

It’s not cool. It’s not clever. It’s not practical. And it has very many shortcomings. But then so does my dog. She barks at birdsong, eats donkey dung, knocks glasses off tables with her tail, costs a fortune at the vet and licks men who come to the house with some spare gravel they don’t need. She also has a huge soft spot for Jehovah’s Witnesses. And yet I wouldn’t change her for the world.

So it goes with the Terios. You need to be drunk to buy one. But I doubt you will ever regret it.

VITAL STATISTICS

Model: Daihatsu Terios Sport
Engine type: Four-cylinder, 1298cc
Power: 84bhp @ 6000rpm
Torque: 89 lb ft @ 3200rpm
Transmission: Five-speed manual, four-wheel drive
Suspension: (front) MacPherson struts with coil springs (rear) rigid axle with coil springs
Tyres: 205/70 R15
Fuel/CO2: 36.7mpg (combined) 183 g/km
Top speed: 90mph
Acceleration: 0 to 62mph: 12.9sec
Price: £11,995
Verdict: Not so much a pocket rocket as a pocket poppet

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