Unlike most motoring journalists, I do not attend ritzy, champagne-drenched, Michelin-starred, club-class car launches at exotic hotels in sun-kissed, faraway places. I’m not being holier than thou here. I’d love to eat a swan at Mazda’s expense and spend my life licking the goose fat from the hand that feeds me, but I simply don’t have the time.

This means I never get the chance to meet the people who design the cars I drive or the people who are charged with selling them. In one important way, this is a good thing. When I review a car, I am unable to visualise the man who sweated into the night to make it possible. So I can be as rude as I like because I don’t have to worry about upsetting him.

However, there is a downside. Because I don’t meet the engineers or sit through the two-hour-long technical press conferences, I am less well informed than my colleagues. And less well fed, for that matter.

And so, because I approached the new Ford Ka in a state of blissful ignorance, I was expecting a very great deal. I assumed it would be a funky, small and cheap alternative to the new Ford Fiesta, a car that does everything very well whether you’re on the road, at the shopping centre or taking part in a beach assault with the Royal Marines.

Almost immediately, however, I began to dislike the Ka very much. First of all, the styling’s not quite right. The door — and I apologise to the faceless man who made it — doesn’t seem to sit very happily with the lines of the profile. And the wheelarches look as though they were going to be flared but someone dropped the original clay model from a fork-lift truck and they got squashed.

Inside, there are problems too, including ridiculously hard seats that someone — whom I’ve never met — at Ford thinks are a good idea. Worst of all, though, is the driving position. The steering wheel, which adjusts for height but not reach, is too far away and, even on its highest setting, too low down.

And the clutch pedal is far too close to the centre console. A small foot rest has been provided inside the aforementioned console but the only way you can actually get your foot in there properly is if you saw it off.

Then I began the test drive and things got worse. Because the old Ka looked like a teapot, you didn’t expect it to be very fast. And it’s the same story with the Toyota iQ. That looks like an urban runaround, but the new Ka does not. It looks like a normal car; a Fiesta that’s shrunk slightly in the wash. Which is why I was expecting it to be able to get up a hill. Which in fifth it often could not. Sometimes I had a problem in fourth.

Even on level ground things are far from rosy because at anything above 50 the whole car really does start to feel loose and disconnected, a problem that was amplified by a graunching front nearside brake disc. Often I found myself doing 40, at which speed following drivers became impatient and started to overtake in silly places.

Then it went dark and as a result I discovered the new Ka’s biggest problem. It’s a whopper. A proper full-sized elephant in the wardrobe. A genuine, bona fide reason all on its own for buying something else. The headlights are absolutely useless. For seeing where you are going, a Hallowe’en pumpkin would be better.

I did a test. I drove at the speed at which I could safely stop in the distance visible in the light from those miserable candles in jam jars. And it was 18mph. Any faster and I was having to rely on crossed fingers that there was nothing out there in the gloom.

The only solution was to drive on full beam, which was a) little better and b) just bright enough for oncoming motorists to retaliate, making me even more blind than if I’d stayed on dipped.

Explore Jeremy Clarkson

• Greatest Hits

• Good Car, Bad Car