One of the factors that's rapidly making diesel cars all that more attractive, is the continuing explosion of oilburner choice. Just ten years ago, there were no turbodiesel cars on the market - just a few plain and simple diesels.

The few brave carmakers like Merc and Volksie that offered diesel cars until then, only did so to satisfy the farmer market - they had subsidised (free) diesel, so everything on the farm had to be diesel powered - from the John Deere to the bakkie to the Sunday Mercedes. And the daughter's Golf.

Those cars were agricultural tools and drove like it too. Townsfolk occasionally also bought diesel cars - but that was to be different and quirky - there were no tree huggers - yet.

Until fuel prices went through the roof, that is. And someone mated a diesel engine and a turbocharger. That was the revolution - suddenly diesels made adequate power and incredible torque to not only threaten 'conventional' cars in pure performance, but teach them a lesson at the fuel pump, which turbodiesels need to visit almost half as often as petrol cars do...

Trouble is the diesel car was still considered a dirty, smelly and lethargic farm implement, so despite them ticking so many boxes petrol cars could not; turbodiesels were saddled with a false image problem from the outset. And unlike in first world countries where alert authorities offered diesel at a fraction of the price of petrol to promote the more sensible power source to blinkered motorists, nothing like that ever happened here.

Lucky then for the venerable South African bakkie owner, whose more pragmatic, perception-free attitude saw to it that when turbodiesel hit the light commercial world, it did so like wildfire. It was that turbodiesel bakkie success story that most convinced more 'traditional' car buyers to consider turbodiesels in this country...

So, let's get back to the subject at hand then. Today, turbodiesel powers every kind of car and like overseas, if you are a carmaker and you do not have a diesel in every facet of your range, you're in big pooh. That swing has come around so fast, that it is imperative that every buyer today has a diesel choice in whatever new car he or she buys.

Which leads us to this trio:
Up until not much more than a month ago, if you wanted a stylish and sporty turbodiesel hatchback, you were essentially confined to the top of Volkswagen's clever 3-car Polo range - the one with the all-red TDI badge. Until this month, that is, when this trio popped out of the woodwork...

Fiat's new Grande Punto tickles our fancy far more than any other baby Fiat ever has - and most of us here are of Italian extraction, so that alone put it into perspective. And we've been itching to get our grubby paws on the flagship 88kW 280Nm 1.9 Multijet for a while already.

Let's dwell on that for a second - 88kW was reserved for a 2-litre family sedan when I grew up and 280Nm was the stuff of those then newfangled flagship sporty executive cars. This is a chic baby hot hatch...

Even more impressive in that context is the Peugeot 207 1.7 HDI, which was perhaps never even intended as a stylish hot hatch, but it pulls it off with ease. It's albeit lesser 80kW and 240Nm from a somewhat smaller mill are thus just as creditworthy as the Fiat's.

The third joker in our hatch pack takes the cake. New to South Africa, the Spanish Seat brand fits into VW's burgeoning local range below Audi and above Volkswagen and it builds its cars the way only the Spanish do things - in the chicest and most stylish manner possible.

Seat's 96kW 310Nm Ibiza 1.9 TDI 96 (there's an even more powerful Cupra version due soon...) offers power and torque figures I'd have killed to find in a car to win in Production Racing with in the late '80s. This car would have annihilated the GTis, GSis and Shadowlines of the day, but today that package comes in a stylish mini hot hatch positioned where a 60 kW 140Nm 1.6-litre petrol powered car would have sufficed then...

All three of these cars offer fuel economy way beyond what anyone would ever have dreamed of back then, let alone performance - and at compatible local pricing with inflation considered. I trust you're starting to get the picture....

The differences everywhere else though, are just as immense. Starting with safety, the Fiat and Peugeot more so than the albeit ageing Ibiza (the oldest model in the new-to-SA Seat range) are miles ahead - modern cars are designed to look after you as best as possible when you bin them and the age group this mob is mostly destined to satisfy needs to be protected from themselves more than most.

Ride and handling too, has moved way ahead over the years. Of these three, the obviously sportiest Seat is also more pointed and better dynamically sorted than its rivals - but that is what Seat is about. The plusher Fiat and Peugeot are more poseur than pacy, but both are still most fun to drive, none the less.

Talking of posing, the Fiat wins it for us. Glance at it quickly and we'll forgive you for thinking it may be a mini-Maserati - especially this one - it gives you a warm feeling and certainly looks the million bucks. The Pug is also cool looking, but nowhere near as cool as the Fiat - it seems that Peugeot has been looking too closely at what people like Bangle are doing on ugly big cars and while it is indeed most striking, 207 seems at odds with itself - that big, toothy mouth, for example, appears to be in dire need of a big toothpick...

The Seat as noted, is older than you think and in this company, it seems stylistically stretched, although we have to admit that its more simple design fettled by an appropriately and aggressive body kit that brings it as close as it will ever be to its two brand new rivals here.

Look at its Spanish siblings though to be sure that when this one is replaced, it will be by a car to match its pace advantages with those of sophistication and style... Inside, the Frenchman comes back at the Italian well with a finely appointed and modern cabin in typical Peugeot fashion, although the cockpit is where the Spaniard clearly falls short of its more modern rivals.

We've left the best for last - performance. There, the Seat is the undisputed king - the most powerful and lightest car (probably thanks to an older, flimsier chassis) will always win and the bombshell from Barcelona is no exception in this gang. Like albeit the less specifically powerful Fiat, The Seat's engine is a little less sophisticated than the Peugeot's, but as they say, there's no substitute for cubic capacity and the most powerful must win.

The Seat is clearly the most agile of this lot, so if Wednesday night drags at WesBank or any set of traffic lights that can present you with a dice are high on your agenda, then that twelve or fourteen grand premium is definitely worth spending.

But if pose and pretty are more your kind of a thing, or you want the newest, sharpest tool on the block, then the other two are the ones to consider. If it were me - no not because it's Italian, too, but because it has the most compelling all-round package and it manages to best marry what the three cars here are trying to, I'd buy the Fiat - it's the car that best typifies the turbodiesel advantage into a new little niche that the world is at last ready to embrace...