The vast majority of potential 'buyers' will never own the car and as such, the RRP is utterly irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the monthly payment.

And there's the rub. For such a pricey hybrid the monthly PCP payment will be around £250, which translates to an annual depreciation, or cost of keepership, of around £3000 which, unlike the purchase and ownership of a new car, will never diminish as the years roll by.

For comparison, our brand new slightly larger but lighter 130bhp Peugeot 2008 EAT6 cost £17,000 nearly two years ago. At £250 pcm it would effectively pay for itself in another four years with no further depreciation/cost of ownership.

At the customary PCP allowance of only 6000 miles per annum (which is around what ours does) it will have only done 35,000 miles. But, a higher mileage PCP driver will have to pay around an extra £80 for every 1000 miles above this allowance each year.

I regularly drive a 2010 Fiesta 1.25 Zetec that we use as a pool car at work for running drivers around. It reminds me of how right Ford got this generation of Fiesta and how tough the Yamaha designed 1.25/1.4/1.6 16v petrols are.

Yes, I had a 1.25 Zetec as a hire car a while back and enjoyed it. Obviously the engine lacked the grunt of today's turbo models but it loved to rev, and the ride on that older Zetec model (standard suspension, smallish wheels, high profile tyres) was much better than the ST Line.