In the midst of what we all hope will be a long and glorious summer, winter may be the farthest thing from your mind. But as much as we are all grateful for a reliable little runaround to get us to the beach on a sunny day, it is in the colder months that we really come to depend on our four-wheeled friends. With this in mind, roadtesting a car in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet was a smart move, even if it was unintentional. You may be surprised to learn that you can hire a car 400km inside the Arctic Circle, and on a recent trip to the very top of Norway that’s exactly what we did. When conditions are best for seeing the Northern Lights they’re still pretty terrible for driving. Sheet ice covers even the one major road that links Norway’s most northerly towns, and frequent blizzards mean deep, fresh snow often covers the ice. Distances and journey times between settlements are long, and the temperatures dip below -20° at night. An accident or breakdown is easy to have, and almost always serious in consequence.

So you may also be surprised to learn that I was delighted to find a Skoda Roomster Scout waiting for me at the Hertz office in Tromso. By coincidence I had just tested a standard Roomster for this column in more conventional conditions in the UK, and was preparing to praise it. And, after a week driving a randomly selected car – not one prepared for a press test – in some of Europe’s fiercest conditions I’m convinced that it is one of the best cars in the Volkswagen group stable.

Our hire car had a few optional extras that made it particularly pleasurable to use. The Scout edition adds an extra 43mm of height, ideal for bouncing over snowdrifts and city-centre kerbs. The heated seats and iPod connector were in constant use and a full-length glass roof made the cabin feel spacious and airy during the day, and allowed us to scan the skies for the Northern Lights at night, lying back with the seats reclined.

But the Roomster’s real appeal goes far beyond a few surprise-and-delight optional extras. The Czech carmaker, bought by the Volkswagen group in 1991, has a 100-year history of innovative, practical engineering, to which VW has added unimpeachable quality and reliability – attributes lacking when the company was under state control.

The Roomster is the perfect manifestation of Skoda’s DNA. It uses excellent, proven engines and other components from the Fabia hatchback and much bigger Octavia saloon, and packages them in a unique, extraordinarily flexible bodyshell. It is not, I freely admit, the best-looking car on the road: it is slightly van-like in profile with an oddly mismatched swoopy nose and boxy rear, and oddly misaligned side glass.

But the looks are just a reflection of the way it manages to be several cars at once. Seated in the front, it’s all sporty hatchback, with a terrific, low but very adjustable seating position. Rear seat passengers sit higher, greatly improving their view out and increasing the sensation of space, on seats that recline and slide fore and aft. The boot is colossal even with the rear seats in place, but if you need a little more you can either fold and tip them forward, or remove them entirely to transform the Roomster from a car into a rather upmarket van with a flat load floor capable of carrying weights of up to half a tonne.

Six engines options are available; the three diesels are easily the most popular. We tested the 80PS 1.4-litre and 105PS 1.9-litre diesels. In each case there was a little more noise and vibration than in a Golf with the same engine; a little refinement has to be sacrificed to get the Roomster down to a €12,500 entry price. But simpler engineering also makes it light, which in turn makes it very economical, and combined with the diesels’ torque makes for an engaging and surprisingly rapid drive.

But it’s the chassis that impresses more. The steering is light but direct and informative, while Skoda’s thinking on suspension reflects the poor state of Czech roads in former times; it is long in travel, supple and comfortable, but with good body control when you want to enjoy yourself

The Roomster is exactly how a Skoda ought to be: practical, charismatic and utterly unpretentious. You might struggle at first with its looks or image but be warned; cars like this that do so much but ask so little in cost or compromise can be beguiling. Try one and you’ll ask yourself why you need anything else.

Skoda’s latest figures show that 630,000 people each year decide they don’t. Within the Volkswagen group, Skoda’s growth has been unfairly overshadowed by the more glamorous Audi. Sales in 2007 were up 15% and profit up nearly 40% to €600m. A fresh model line-up should see that sales figure grow again this year. The latest is the Superb saloon; with its acres of rear leg room it beats even the Mercedes S-class as the car I’d most like to be met at the airport by. High oil prices and a squeeze on credit will favour Skoda’s affordable, frugal cars in its existing markets; its sales grew slightly in Germany last year, despite a near-10% slump in the new car market there. And the brand is expanding rapidly into new markets, with new factories in Sarajevo and India, and sales starting in China and restarting in Australia.