SUVs won the battle, but hatchbacks can still do it all

It was at once an unsatisfying and actually a very satisfying verdict for a group test. When I put the revised Volkswagen Golf against a pair of rivals in the Toyota Corolla and Peugeot 308 last August, the overarching conclusion was that all three were thoroughly recommendable.

There were a bunch of alternatives that I didn’t include, simply because 10-car group tests are a logistical nightmare, but we could have brought the Mazda 3, the Honda Civic and the Ford Focus and the result would have been broadly the same.

You might conclude, then, that it doesn’t matter which C-segment hatchback you pick, because they’re all white goods. The opposite is true, though: in a world filled with slightly mediocre cars, here’s a market segment that is still bursting at the seams with excellence.

Although SUVs and crossovers have asserted dominance in recent years, combustion-engined C-segment hatchbacks have been the bedrock of the European car market, selling in their millions.

As such, manufacturers have invested money, time and effort into making them really good, and it shows. In many ways, the C-segment hatchback is simply peak car – as if Goldilocks turned out to be an automotive engineer rather than a porridge-pilfering vagrant.

They’re just the right size for European roads: not so small that you feel like you’re driving a Cozy Coupe and not so big that they’re a struggle to park or squeeze down hedge-lined country lanes. 

You can just about fit a family in but you’re not then lugging around a tonne of redundant metal when you drive it by yourself.

That rightness of size starts a virtuous circle. Because these cars are not excessively heavy or excessively tall, they don’t need big engines to manage good performance. (The 148bhp petrol Golf does 0-62mph in 8.4sec. Do you really need more?)

And because they don’t have big engines, they can manage 50mpg without trying. Go for a diesel (if you can find one) or a hybrid and 70mpg could be within reach.

Because there isn’t all that much weight or height to control, the suspension can be fairly soft, which means that ride and handling needn’t be a compromise: you can have tight body control and direct steering without the ride turning rough.

It’s all done with less than exotic components, which means they’re not ridiculously expensive if they ever need replacing. Pair it with some 16in wheels with chunky tyres and you’re really winning: pillowy ride comfort and cheap tyres. Talking about cheap: any hatchback is usually a few thousand pounds cheaper than the equivalent SUV.

Quietly great to drive, practical, economical and affordable: if the C-segment hatchback were introduced today as a new idea or product, we would all go mad for it and call it a game-changer.

But because we have had the Golf for 50 years, the Corolla for 40 years and the Peugeot 306/308 for 30 years, familiarity has bred contempt. They are just seen as the standard, the thing that has always existed, the car your parents drove.

More practical than a saloon and more efficient and better to drive than an SUV, a hatchback is automotive bread and butter: hard to beat but not very fashionable. It’s just in need of a sourdough moment now.