Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

Then we have the leather that covers the seats. It is leather. It must have come from a cow. But most cows I’ve seen are made from meat. The cows Hyundai uses are plainly a bit more synthetic.

This, then, is not a car you can love, because you sense all the time that it was made using bottom-line engineering by a gigantic Korean corporation that produces cars only to make money.

Small wonder this car is so popular with caravannists. They choose to go on what nobody else in the world would call a holiday. So it stands to reason that they like what I can’t really call a car.

However, the Santa Fe is cheap. The high-end, seven-seat, four-wheel-drive version that I tested is £30,195, way less than you’d have to pay for a European seven-seat, four-wheel-drive car.

It’s also cheap to run, though only if you go for a version with a manual gearbox. The automatic will send your fuel bills through the roof.

The options list, however, will not. You get, as standard, ABS, BAS, DBC, EPB, ESP, ESS, HAC, TSA and VSM. This thing has more abbreviations than the British Army. And more airbags – seven, to be precise. In fact, it’s hard to think of anything you’d get on a Volvo XC90 or a Land Rover Discovery that you don’t get on the Santa Fe. Apart from a sense of style, wellbeing and oneness with yourself.

That said, the Hyundai’s not a bad looker and it drives pretty well too. Again, the people who set up the suspension were plainly dancing to a tune conducted by the company’s accounts department, so they haven’t gone the extra mile. Or even the extra inch. It’s not a rewarding car to drive in any way, but it goes round most corners at most speeds without crashing.

Can it go off road? Yes, but not very far. With a part-time four-wheel-drive system, it’ll get your caravan into a field. But it probably won’t get it out again. Which is a good thing for the rest of us.

And so, as we approach the end, I have to start thinking about a conclusion. It’s tricky, because the petrol in my veins dislikes cars of this type in the way that a restaurant critic would dislike a McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish.

However, in the real world where people live, where a quail’s egg’s a bit daft, the Filet-o-Fish is very popular. And there’s my problem. In the real world the Santa Fe is cheap, it doesn’t drink a lot of diesel, it’s well equipped, it’s good-looking, and the 2.2-litre engine is torquey enough to pull your caravan. Even if it’s a Sterling Europa 565. So who cares if the seats are a bit plasticky?

It’s not a car for the silly world in which I live. But elsewhere it’s bloody brilliant.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how people argue about which mobile phone is best. Honestly and truthfully, to the vast majority of people, they are indistinguishable. It’s the same with wine. Of course there is a handful of enthusiasts who in a blind tasting really can tell white from red, but to the rest of us a £4.99 bottle of Château d’Asda tastes the same, and has the same effect, as a £45,000 bottle of Pétrus.

In fact, this is true of absolutely everything. Cheese. Pizzas. Caribbean islands. I spoke with a famous rock god the other day, who agreed that the whole debate about guitars is nonsense because they’re all identical.

And so are cities, really. Brummies will argue that Birmingham is better than Manchester or Liverpool or Sheffield. But to the casual observer they’re as different as milk bottles.

Then there’s music. To those who were born under the influence of Stanley Baldwin, the Rolling Stones sound exactly the same as N-Dubz. It’s all just boom, boom, boom, as the elderly are fond of saying. And I know what they mean because I simply cannot tell one piece of classical music from another. Unless it’s been used in an advert on the television, it’s all just one endless parade of girls sitting with their legs wide apart, sawing a cello in half with a bit of horse, and men blowing in tubes.

Yes, there are people who can tell not just Bach from Chopin, but also what orchestra they’re listening to and even what conductor is in charge. But for people with jobs and friends? No. It’s all just bars and tone.

You know where this is going and, of course, you’re right. Cars are all the same too. They’re all Volkswagen Golfs. There are fast Golfs and big Golfs and cheap Golfs. There are Japanese Golfs and V12 Golfs and American Golfs. But they’re all Golfs.

I can tell the difference between a Ford Focus and a Vauxhall Astra, but that’s because I’m a nerd. However, I’m not such a nerd that I don’t realize both are actually Golfs. You could put my mother in a Lincoln Town Car and she would be incapable of telling it apart from her own car. Which is a Golf. She thinks my Range Rover is a Golf, too, albeit one that is idiotically hard to park.

She’s right, of course. I sometimes wonder why anyone ever buys anything else. You want a fast car? Buy a Golf GTI. You want an economical car? Buy a Golf diesel. You want a cheap car? Buy a Golf from the second-hand columns. You want a big car? Buy a Golf Plus. You want a convertible car? Don’t buy a Golf convertible. It’s terrible. But do buy a Volkswagen Eos. Which is a Golf.

You can fit five people in a Golf, the same number as you can get in a Rolls-Royce Phantom. A Golf will cruise easily at 95 mph, the same as a Bugatti Veyron. It is as reliable as Switzerland, as comfortable as your favourite armchair, as parsimonious as a Methodist’s auntie and, all things considered, good value too.

I’ll tell you how brilliant it is. Volkswagen has spent the past five years working round the clock on an all-new model. The company started with a clean sheet of paper and an open mind. And what it has ended up with is a Golf.

If you set out to rethink the concept of a table, you’ll end up with a table. And if you set out to rethink the concept of a car, you’ll end up with a Golf.

The boot is a little bigger than it was before. There’s a little crease running down the side. It’s cheaper as well. And though it’s longer and wider, it’s 100 kg lighter. Which means the new model is as parsimonious as a Methodist auntie’s lapdog. Or indeed any dog, because they’re all the same too. In fact all pets are the same. Some stand in a field. Some live in a tank. Some purr, and some have a shell. But they all need feeding and housing and… I’m digressing.

Economy is probably the big news with the new Golf. And rightly so. Because if all you want is ‘a car’, then you want to spend as little as is humanly possible on fuelling it. Other car makers are fitting their Golfs with all sorts of stuff – independent rear suspension, for instance – which is fine for the tiny number of connoisseurs. But for everyone else? Independent rear suspension and the benefits it brings are less interesting and important than the result of a village cricket match in Pakistan.

No. When it comes to cars these days, the top 10 things that matter are: economy, economy, economy, economy, economy, economy, economy, economy, economy and safety.

My son is about to turn seventeen and wants a car. Does he want it to be fast? Good-looking? Comfy? Nope. All he is bothered about is economy. And he’s not alone.

VW has obviously realized this, which is why the 1.4-litre TSI GT model I tested is fitted with a four-cylinder engine that switches to two cylinders when you’re pootling along. And then shuts down altogether at the lights. What’s more, messages flash up on the dash, giving helpful hints on how to get the most miles from each gallon. One tells you, for example, not to disengage the clutch until the revs have dropped to 1300 rpm.