Usually when I sit down to write a review, the theme comes to me quite quickly. More often than not it’ll occur to me while I’m driving, and usually in the first 48-72 hours of a test drive.

But this time, I was coming up dry. In fact, I’ve been struggling with this review for a while but today, I finally realised why. It’s not the car, it’s me.

Let me take you back a few steps and give you a quick recap on the Kia Ceed. When it launched in the UK, the Cee’d (the facelift also lost the apostrophe) was picked by Top Gear as its replacement for a reasonably priced car, and it certainly is that.

A spacious family hatchback

The near-top spec model I tested was around the £25k mark, which for a spacious family hatchback isn’t unreasonable. It’s not cheap, no, but an equivalent spec’d Ford Focus for example would set you back around at least £27k before you’ve added any bells and whistles. And the Ceed has them as standard.

Comfy but practical

So a tick for the Ceed’s level of spec and, on balance, I have to say the interior finish is perfectly okay. It doesn’t ooze luxury but it’s not meant to. It appears comfy but practical while still looking pretty good.

It’s also a good car to drive. It feels okay on the road, doesn’t wallow round the corners and has all the features you’d hope for – heated seats, good media player and a truly amazing reversing camera.

The lane keeping aid is a little militant and the Sat Nav is not the most intuitive, with a map and set of turn directions that flow from the bottom of the list upwards, but I guess you’d get used to that. The boot is good, it looks better than Kia’s early models did and seats a family of four in comfort. The engine seems efficient yet relatively pokey if you want to push it, but...

And that’s the issue, right there. There’s a but… something almost intangible until it suddenly struck me. I didn’t really connect with this car, despite not really finding anything that I didn’t like. I fought with this review for five days before realising what the problem was.

It was me.

It’s missing character and spirit

I like a car that has a bit of character, some spirit or soul. And that’s what the Ceed, for me, was missing. For someone who isn’t a petrol head but has a family, this is probably a great choice of car.

It’s just not for me.