I’m not one of those badge snobs. You know, the type of a driver who wouldn’t have a Korean marque at any price or allow a Czech vehicle to park in their drive.

Well they are the losers because the best cars around for money at the moment come from Kia, Hyundai or Skoda.

They build a host of brilliant vehicles and I’d have one at the drop of a hat.

I’ve just got back from driving the Kia Proceed GT-Line with the one litre engine and I’ve been on a European tour via the shuttle. And it was brilliant.

So while the UK car market was stalling in the summer, Kia sales just continued upwards and onwards. Total sales in July in the UK were more than 7,000 and the Cee’d continues to be a favourite with business and retail customers.

Sales to the end of July were almost 60,000 and the Kia market share is climbing to almost 4,000. They are on track to top the 92,000 mark and two new Kia vehicles are ready to spring into the marketplace.

Because Kia are totally confident about their vehicles they hand out a seven year warranty with every new car they build and it can be transferred so this keeps the second hand value high.

The Cee’d I had was the one with the1.0-litre Ecoturbo engine, which is cranked up to 118bhp and comes in at under £20,000.

It is a front wheel drive and has a six speed manual gearbox and will give you almost 120mph and 0-60mph in 10.5 seconds.

On top of that you will get almost 60 miles to the gallon and the emissions are 115g/km. A pretty good packet all round.

Three of us travelled over in Europe for four days with three suit cases and by the time we were coming home jammed to the gunnels with duty free wines and other bits and pieces we were in no way uncomfortable.

We might have had problems in a three door but the five door was excellent and equally as good as a VW Golf or the Ford Focus.

All in all there are nine variants of the Cee’d with petrol and diesel engines and the prices vary from £15,500 to more than £24,000 depending what kit you have on board.

There are big bumpers with deep side skirts, LED daytime running lights and 17-inch alloys. The suspension has been specially designed to handle the terrible British roads.

There’s plenty of kit including DAB, sat-nav, Bluetooth and a reversing camera As well as the substantial boot which provides 380 litres of space there are other compartments in the front and rear console and also an under floor storage area.

Even though this is a Korean vehicle it was actually built in Europe at Zilnia in Slovakia which is where the Soviet Union used to build its tanks for the Eastern bloc armies. So when Kia came calling for staff there were plenty of engineers on hand for a new car factory!

There are 10,000 people employed there now and more than one million cars have been built there since they started the factory in 2005.