Nine excellent cars you should definitely buy instead of the best city cars

City cars are kind of like dogs, or Canada – it’s just cruel to give such a happy, earnest thing a kicking. Unlike so many machines in the automotive world, city cars aren’t pretending to be anything but basic, economical transport. And that imbues them with an authenticity and likeability that manages to charm even the perennially (and some would say professionally) unimpressed bods that form the Top Gear writing staff.

And yet here we are, primed and ready to argue against them. So, in the order that we thought of them, here are 10 of the best alternatives to the city car that you probably should end up buying.

If you’re willing to accept steering woollier than the wooliest of jumper collections, why not embrace something just as old-fashioned, but many millions of times cooler – the original Willys Jeep? These things survived one of the worst conflicts in human history, so we’re confident they’ll be able to handle a quick run to the shops for milk, cereal, and all the things supermarkets stock that we never seem to have use for.

Enter the Citroen SM, a mashup of Citroen’s heyday smoothness and that part of Maserati’s history where it wasn’t actively crap, but it was broke. The broke and actively crap part came later on, in case you’re curious.

The SM is perhaps the most oddly beguiling shape in the entire motoring oeuvre; a heady blend of somehow-slippery angles and generous curves that refuse to make sense, no matter how long you stare. To then learn that there’s a front-mid-mounted Maserati V6, cosseting hydropneumatic suspension, a manual gearbox and front-wheel drive continues the theme of things not really making sense. But, much like a David Lynch film, aren’t things better when you’re left scratching your head weeks after experiencing it?

Say what you will about cabin space, luggage space, or the absence of all of these things, you can’t deny that the Lotus Elise is certainly a car. And cars are something that you can, in most cases, drive in a city. If you follow that reductive logic, a hand-built, mid-engined sports car is a city car.

The Elise, like roughly every car that used to emerge from the Lotus factory, is tiny. Its small four-cylinder engine would be economical in a barge, but in the diminutive – and featherweight – Elise, that advantage extends even further. And in terms of cabin and luggage capacity, if you’re seriously considering a city car... see where we’re going with this?

“How,” you might be wondering, “does a heroically powerful Audi estate help me around a city?” The RS2, unlike roughly every Audi Avant that’s come after it, isn’t the size of your average Soviet submarine – in fact, it’s perfectly tiny by modern standards – so it’ll squeeze through gaps and into parking spaces like a modern econobox, just at roughly 18 times the speed. Whether or not this is what you’re after is, of course, up to personal taste.

We’re also pretty sure this is the best-looking RS Avant ever, from its Porsche 964 wheels to its... um, Porsche-style wraparound tail-light treatment. Can we get Porsche back on the line and make another small RS Avant, please Audi?

A cheap rotbox is the apotheosis of stress-free motoring. Speedbumps? Meh. Width restrictors? Bounce through them like a pinball; the new dents and scratches will just match the old ones. That same laissez-faire attitude will see you through hail damage, paint peel, moss growth and roughly anything else that’d cause you to curse the sky itself and everything under it if it were a car you cared about.

And by spending a few hundred on your city car, you’re free to spend your proper money on your high-days-and-holidays car. The way it should be, then: no grandstanding, no artifice, just cars doing what you need them to, when you need them. Now, as we accidentally got a little too literal and genuine for a second, let’s move on...

Come on, how often do you get the chance to jump aboard a literal bandwagon? Even if there weren’t a bevy of benefits on offer in the BV206, we’d still probably consider one, just to run that joke into the ground harder than novelty ringtones. Man, maybe not all bandwagons are worth jumping on, eh, Crazy Frog?

But we’re pretty confident we’ve found one that’s worth jumping on: a two-piece, articulated, tracked vehicle able to traverse, soft snow, swamps and bodies of water, from the frozen chunk of marvellousness that is Sweden. Coincidentally, ‘tracked vehicle’ is what its name actually means in Swedish, so there’s something else you know that’s of little use or consequence. Welcome to our world.

Fact: Harrier Jump Jets are beyond cool. Are they slightly on the difficult side to procure by your average private citizen? Sure. Expensive to run, should you manage to get one? Not if you have a defence budget; otherwise, yes. Brimming with ways to go wrong? Well, an RAF Wing Commander, when talking about the Harrier, used phrases like “fearsome array of limitations” and “spending most of each flight worrying about the landing”.

Now, unless something has gone horribly amiss, these are not issues shared by the city car. But even the very best city cars still haven’t mastered vertical takeoff and landing, nor are they particularly well-suited to close air support. Also, Arnie didn’t pilot a Citroen C1 in the climax of True Lies, did he?

The city (except for Canberra, of course) is generally a fairly interesting place, with many places to see, things to do and destructively potent drinks to imbibe. So, rather than shoulder the expense of cabs or hotels in the city, just roll out of the pub and into your campervan. Best of all, you can stock its fridge and cupboards with bacon, eggs and vitamins to steel yourself for the day after the night before.

What if you still believe the city is a concrete jungle – regardless of your feelings on whether or not it’s the place dreams are made of – and need a set of wheels that’ll tackle it without forming so much as a bead of condensation on its radiator?

Well, a Dakar-ready, space-frame and fibreglass rally raid machine ought to fit that bill. Thanks to a 5.0-litre V8, it’ll go from nought to 60mph in 4.8 seconds, which is entirely useless in city centres where speed limits rarely exceed 30mph and actual traffic speeds barely top half of that. Whatever: the good news is that there is an integrated fire suppression system, roll cage and FIA-spec safety harnesses.

Also, when’s the last time a Fiat 500 made you exclaim “I AM A DRIVING GOD”? Yeah, exactly.