Because being faithful to a single car for a long period of time is a difficult business for me I'm always looking at new car prices to wonder if I can replace my current car with something or other.

Lately I've been looking at small, basic, no-frills hatchbacks and I have found something interesting. One of the models the popped up in the screen was the, great news!, Dacia Sandero.

Now, I've always liked the Sandero and its no-nonsense approach to basic motoring, and the latest facelift has been successful, but I've always been worried that if I got one it would just fall apart, wouldn't go round corners properly (probably because the front left wheel had fallen off) and that brakes would've been made from old milk bottle tops.

But for the sake of the argument lets assume that the Sandero is a fine little car. On top of all that it costs around five grand less than even the cheapest of rivals. However there's a major problem. The most powerful engine has 90bhp.

Now as we have discussed recently, on the open road this is a problem, because with 90bhp when you find a big-eared oaf in his old tatty Peugeot 307 doing around 37 you are going to be forever stuck behind.

Everyone knows I'm from 1924 and that my time has long passed by now, but has it really? Apparently the entire Dacia range (and the Sandero in particular) are being a great success for Renault, so as it turns out I'm not alone in my liking of basic cars with manual everything.

I just wished that they fitted more powerful engines to it. And since it is based in old Renault bits it shouldn't be too difficult. Then you'd be able to have 130-140bhp car that costs less than 15 grand; and this would be great.