It didn’t take long to really dislike this car. Underpowered, a dog to drive and a pig to park, it had more squeaks and rattles than a toddlers’ tea party, writes David Duffy.

Luckily for Hyundai, the source of this motoring misery did not bear its badge. It was one of Cowley’s good old Maestros.

Hyundai has benefited so much from the Government scrappage scheme – it’s now the country’s top-selling retail seller – that a press office brightspark with a sense of humour, and a sadistic streak, thought I might like to take to the wheel of one of the bangers which had been traded in for a brand new Hyundai, before getting my hands on an i30.

So up rolled a red R-registration Maestro, which turned out to be something of a rarity. Assembled from a kit originally destined for a factory in Bulgaria, it ended up in the hands of an elderly man who only covered 28,000 miles in it. That was the good news.

The bad news was provided by the combination of a wheezy 1.3-litre A-Series engine, muscle-enhancing manual steering and get-it-right-or-you go-nowhere manual choke, to say nothing of the heavy clutch pedal complete with an increasingly loud hamster squeak.

At first I thought the how-to-fix-it workshop manual in the boot had been left as a joke, but now I am not so sure.

The relief when the Maestro was replaced almost 300 noisy, tooth-loosening miles later with the limited edition i30 ES was palpable.

The point of driving the cars back-to-back to highlight the improvements in quality in an ordinary family car was well made.

A few moments fiddling with the height-adjustable driver’s seat and steering wheel on the i30 and you are sitting comfortably and looking across a crisply designed dashboard with all the expected accoutrements of 21st-century driving – electric windows and mirrors, trip computer, six-speaker hi-fi system, air conditioning and even an iPod connector.

Powered by a peppy 108 horsepower, 1.4-litre engine, the i30’s quiet, economical and easy to manage manner makes it a well-built, spacious, sensible package that would suit any family well.

Quite apart from the improvements in quality and comfort, more importantly perhaps, the i30 will also protect a family in a way that was unthinkable just a couple of decades ago.

Safety features range from an electronic stability program and six airbags, to whiplash-reducing head restraints for driver and front-seat passenger.

A five-year unlimited mileage warranty is also something that would have raised an eyebrow or two when Maestros were rolling off Cowley’s production line.

As a one-time Maestro owner, it was a trip back in time I would have happily avoided, though the bitter pill was sugared with the fact that every Maestro mile covered resulted in a donation to a cancer charity. It was hard earned.

Auto facts Hyundai i30 ES

Price: £11,795

Insurance group: Four

Fuel consumption (Combined): 46.3mpg

Top speed: 116mph

Length: 424.5cm/167.1in

Width: 177.5cm/69.9in

Luggage capacity: 12 cu ft

Fuel tank capacity: 11.7 gallons/53 litres

CO2 emissions: 145g/km

Warranty: Five years/unlimited mileage