In an idle moment last weekend, I stumbled upon a car supermarket advertising new Subaru Impreza WRX 2.5L models for £14,699. Amazed at the price, I did a little more digging online, and found that there are a few places offering slightly cheaper prices. Motor Depot have plenty for £14,898 on the road with metallic paint. That’s a serious quick car for very little money (230PS and 0-60 in 5.9 seconds).

Add a PPP upgrade (270PS and 0-60 in 5.3 seconds) for £1700 (or less if you shop around), and you’ve got brand new car, with a warranty, and real world performance that no comparably priced hot hatch can get near.

Having said all that, I’ve got no plans to swap my GTI for a cheap Impreza. I have too few opportunities to really use the more modest abilities of my GTI, and the Impreza’s image and running costs put me off. There’s a big Impreza facelift coming soon too, so I can’t imagine that’s going to help residuals either.

Regardless, I can remember being very impressed in 2001 that Honda could sell the Civic Type-R in the UK with 197bhp for £16,000 (over £17,000 with aircon and metallic paint). If you’d told me then that a 270ps brand new and warrantied Impreza (with aircon and metallic paint) could be had for just over £16,500 in 2007, I’d have struggled to believe you.