DAIHATSU MATERIA 1.5 5dr Auto (2007)

Bit of a marmite car but I love it, and had no problems with it either

I had a Micra before i got my Daihatsu Materia and my hubby was getting bored of smacking his head on the roof when he got in and out, so we wanted something bigger inside but not too big outside. Plus we had our little baby girl on the way and wanted something a bit less likely to get trampled on in an accident!

The Materia looked a bit weird when we first saw it, and I certainly took some convincing, but himself liked it so much that he dragged me inside. I didn't like the look of the outside and I'm still not that convinced, but when you get inside it's a totally different story. It's just amazing how enormously huge it is. It looks like a big box but for that you get oodles and oodles of space inside. And the back seats can be rolled forwards or backwards to make more space in the boot, or give the back seat people more leg room. Brilliant! You're sitting really high up as well so even though it's a bit bigger overall it's still really easy to see all around and to tuck it into parking spaces and things.

There's loads of lovely little other touches as well. Like I can open the petrol lid with the car key! That's much better than fiddling about inside the car when I'm in a hurry. I like that you can move the steering wheel up and down, that's really handy for us two as we have such different driving positions. The driver seats goes up and down too if you're different heights like we are. It's good the way all 3 of the back seats have got proper seatbelts as well, I always got a bit worried by those belts that just go across the hips, never really felt they were up to the job.

Hubby says the Daihatsu Materia is not quite as powerful as he might like but he gets it up about 90 sometimes and it seems happy enough with that, if a little bit noisy. I'm not sure it does quite as well for petrol as the Micra, that's the only thing. The insurance is okay, not that low not that high, and the tax is quite high actually, about £200 a year I think.

The one thing that gets a bit annoying in the Materia is that the dash sort of slops towards the driver so you can't put anything on there without it soon falling into your lap - or falling into the space in front of the speedo and other dials, which is a bit daft. But there are cup holders and plenty of other spaces dotted about so it's not that bad.