Suzuki looks like it has got the next Jimny right. When it was launched – so long ago that that I had hair - I wasn’t sure the last one was entirely right. 

To this day, I remember getting in one at an office in Harpenden and not even needing to get out of Harpenden before realising that the ride was appalling.

I don’t know how much Suzuki has actually improved it over the years and how much everything else has sunk to its level. Mostly the former, with maybe a bit of the latter.

But today, while it’s still fairly bouncy, that’s just a natural and not unwelcome characteristic of a car that has so very many other charms: its compact nature, its exquisite lightness, its continued purity and honesty to a simple idea that I think you generally only see from Japanese manufacturers these days.

Cars tend to get less competitive during their life cycle, but I love the Jimny more now, and it feels more competitive now (although what its natural rival is, I’m not entirely certain) than it did 20 years ago, when it was described as ‘smart in city, tough in nature’ and cost around £10,000. Today, it’s smarter and tougher than ever.

It’s even at risk of becoming a bit of an icon, like a Toyota Land Cruiser, Mercedes-Benz G-Class, or Jeep Wrangler.

Or, yes, Land Rover Defender, the most mentioned other car when you show people the new Jimny. “That”, they say, “is how you should update a car like the Defender.”

It should be, but I don’t think it’s possible. Yes, it’s the very same way that Jeep updated the Wrangler, and Mercedes-Benz updated the G-Class. They are all true to their former selves, gently, sympathetically replaced – in ethos, if not in mechanicals – in a way that, honestly, the Defender can never be. It was so starved of development, became so inefficient, so ergonomically dreadful, and so expensive to build, that, from a mechanical perspective, Land Rover can do nothing but tear it up and start again.