THINK Mini, think glamour, think The Italian Job. Think dirty black smoke pumping out of the exhaust, think noisy rattle, think . . . diesel? Well, for the first time, yes, think diesel.

The clamour for the dirty black stuff seems to know no bounds these days and Mini has bent to the wind blowing through the showrooms just like every other carmaker, a little late, admittedly.

Personally, I despise diesel, a feeling entrenched every day at 6am when my neighbour starts his car ready for his daily commute. The key turns and everything rattles, from his engine to my window panes, while the less than alluring whiff of “Ugh de Cologne” — well Stuttgart, actually, because it is a Mercedes — wafts down the street.

Diesel is for buses and trucks and cabs, not cars. It is smelly, sticky and used by drivers in sweaters who have purses for small change and “Baby on Board” stickers in the back window of their highly polished hatchbacks.

But millions of you cannot be wrong, apparently, and Mini’s sales team could not argue against figures showing that nearly a third of all cars being sold in the UK are now diesel-powered.

More important still, BMW exports three-quarters of all the Minis produced at Oxford and the bulk of those are destined for markets such as Germany and France, where they clearly have better taste for wine than fuel and adore their diesels.

Well, they can have a diesel-powered Mini. Now, I do not hold with this particular foreign foible and how I was prepared to condemn such calumny turning a sweet, little cutey-pie into a smokey rattler.

The blade was flashing even before I got into the car for the long test drive over the twisty, undulating roads of the Isle of Wight. And oh, how I had to confess that I loved it. No, honestly. OK, it does rattle when you turn the key, but the sound-proofing is enough to keep the noise outside, but the real test is whether you can remember you are driving a diesel. And I could not.

What BMW has done is to take Toyota’s little 1.4-litre engine out of the Yaris, stuck a turbo-charger onto it and given it a BMW makeover as well as mating it to the six-speed manual gearbox out of the Mini Cooper S.

The result is a Bobby Dazzler that clips along beautifully. In fact, I was astonished to discover that the Mini One D, as it will be badged, has only 75 horsepower to offer, such was the urge of the car to push along at pace.

So you all know everything there is to know about the new Mini, how nice it looks, how clever its retro-styling is and how brilliant its astonishing sales have been. So why change the formula? Well, what many of you will know about the Mini is that it has a small fuel tank and, if you are planning to go far, you might feel it wise to log where the filling stations lie along the route.

Not so with the diesel, for Mini executives claim that almost 60 miles to the gallon is achievable on average, more than that on comfortable long cruises. Even in town, 50mpg is easily within reach, which makes frugality a new virtue in most people’s favourite small car.

The Mini people obviously believe that enough of the sporty instinct of the car has been carried over into the new model, taking some of the exterior design cues from the Cooper S while there is a bevy of safety features, such as automatic stability and traction control.

All in all, the Mini D is a pleasant surprise. I still do not want one because I would not want to wake the neighbours. But if you are watching the pennies, then diesel is for you. Just don’t park outside my house.

Mini D One

Power: 1.4-litre turbo-charged diesel for 75bhp

Gearbox: six-speed manual

Performance: 0-62mph in 13.8sec; top speed 103mph

Fuel consumption: average 58.9mpg; potential range 600 miles

Price: £11,385